#disk replication
Text
In honour of 4/13x15 I'm posting (a very slightly edited version of) the paper I wrote on the Unofficial Homestuck Collection for one of my classes last term. The language/tone is a bit more academic than what I would usually put up on here, but it's exam season so...
Don’t Turn Your Back on the Body:
The Resurrection of Homestuck After the Death of Flash
Digital media is, broadly speaking, very difficult to preserve. The rapid pace of technological development means that obsolescence and decay present a consistent threat to the availability of natively digital works. Most computers produced in 2023 no longer have built in CD drives, and I feel fairly confident in asserting that none are being produced with floppy disk readers outside of hobbyist spaces. Issues with the accessibility of physically stored digital media can be mitigated (at least for now) by the use of external readers, but the preservation of fully digital media, born and hosted in its entirety on the Internet, is a different beast entirely.
This is, in part, an issue of pure volume; no one organization could ever hope to archive the vast amounts of stuff that the Internet is constantly producing, let alone organize it into a resource that could be used effectively. Like Borges’ cartographers who created “a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire,” to fully archive the Internet would be to replicate it in its entirety. Thus scope becomes a central question of fully digital archiving.
The Internet Archive, which also operates the Wayback Machine, answers that question with a resounding and all-encompassing ‘yes’ — their stated goal is to “provide Universal Access to All Knowledge,” but even this comes with caveats. The organization freely permits members of the public to upload files to the archive and save pages on the Wayback Machine, but the work carried out by its official volunteers is more curated, and prioritizes webpages which have been identified as particularly important.
The Internet Archive is very effective within its own space, yes, but it has its limits. When the piece of work you are trying to archive is composed of not just static text and images, but longform animations and complex browser-based games, where do you put it? What do you do when the software necessary to access these elements of the work has been taken offline? And what happens if the people who were supposed to safeguard it fail to do so?
These were the issues that the fans of Homestuck faced in 2020 as the impending deactivation of Flash loomed on the horizon.
But first, before I properly explain what the Unofficial Homestuck Collection really is and why it is so effective as a digital archive, let me tell you about Homestuck.
Frustrated with the poorly implemented official preservation of the comic, and with a lot of free time on his hands, one fan began the Unofficial Homestuck Collection as a personal project during lockdown, during the “depths of 2020.” As the project changed hands and more fans became involved over the following years, its true scope came into focus: the Collection would preserve not only Homestuck itself, in its entirety and with its Flash-dependent pages intact, but also as much of its contextual material as possible, thus making it a prime example of the effectiveness of fan-driven digital archiving and preservation. Because the people who created the Collection are long standing fans of Homestuck, they know which pieces of peripheral material will provide the context the comic demands. The Collection preserves Homestuck as a text in a way that would be impossible in an analogue format, creating an archive both of the work and of the experience of reading it in a serialized format.
Andrew Hussie began* Homestuck on April 13th of 2009, and published it serially on mspaintadventures.com, his personal website at the time, until its conclusion on April 13th, 2016. Prior to beginning Homestuck, Hussie had been publishing short webcomics and pieces of fiction for several years on his older website, Team Special Olympics, since 2004, which had gained him a small but very loyal following. This following was centered mostly around the forum attached to the TSO website, which hosted the first of Hussie’s ‘MS Paint Adventures,’ Jailbreak, in September of 2006. Jailbreak was a short comic which Hussie produced as a collaborative writing game on these forums, in the style of early text adventures.
Beginning with the prompt, “You wake up locked in a deserted jail cell, completely alone. There is nothing at all in your cell, useful or otherwise,” Hussie then wrote the rest of the comic according to the first comment posted after every page. This, perhaps predictably, resulted in a barely coherent mess of a story.
Following the conclusion of Jailbreak after a short 134 pages, Hussie would produce two more comics prior to beginning Homestuck: the unfinished Bard Quest (June-July 2007) and Problem Sleuth (March 2008-April 2009), which was his longest work so far at the time of its conclusion. Problem Sleuth in particular represented a substantial increase in production quality and general coherency over Jailbreak, as Hussie gained experience using the MSPA forums as tools for collaborative storytelling, reigning in the meandering narrative by allowing himself to be more selective about which forum responses he followed.
Hussie would continue this more controlled style of forum collaboration throughout the first three Acts of Homestuck, which followed a much more focused story than any of his prior work, thanks to his decision to use reader input only in specific parts of the comic. In the introduction to the print edition of the first Act, Hussie described his own role during the production of these first Acts as “dungeon master, a game engine responding to input, and an improv comic all in one.” During the process of writing Act 4, Hussie stopped taking prompts from readers entirely, and would construct the rest of the comic ostensibly as its sole author.
‘Okay,’ you might now be thinking, ‘you’ve given me the context, but what the hell is Homestuck? And what’s it about?’ Well, to wildly oversimplify a very complex piece of media, Homestuck is a webcomic about four young online friends who play a video game that causes the end of their universe and grants them the power to create a new one as they see fit. It is a story about growing up and realizing you’ve been forever changed by your experiences, a story about leaving behind the life you knew and constructing a new one. It is also a story about time travel and paradoxes, genetics and cloning, a large number of aliens, a possibly larger number of puppets (at least one of which is sentient), and an unfortunate amount of clowns.
This story slowly unfolds over the course of 8126 pages, 817,929 words, and 166 animated panels, 95 of which contained some degree of interactivity and all of which total over four hours in length. Most of the comic’s pages consist of a main image, usually a short looping gif, accompanied by a text description or dialogue, which is almost always written in the format and style of online chat-logs between characters. As mentioned previously, however, these simpler gif-and-description pages are interspersed with longer videos, animated in Flash and soundtracked by one of Hussie’s several collaborators.
The first of these animated panels was uploaded a few weeks into Homestuck’s publication — an animated opening title-card for the comic, scored ominously with sounds of howling wind and windchimes. This first Flash panel was relatively simple, but the next would introduce a bespoke soundtrack (“Harlequin” by Mark Hadley), and the third would include simple interactivity. These soundtracked animations and interactive segments increased in scope and complexity over the course of the comic’s run; the final animated page in the comic, “[S] Collide,” comes in at nearly twenty minutes in length, and some of the larger interactive segments can take upwards of two hours to fully explore.
While some of the later interactive pages were developed in an engine based on HTML5, most of Homestuck would be built using Adobe Flash, and would depend on the program for basic functionality. This would prove disastrous for the comic’s long term preservation. Flash was very popular, and had become ubiquitous by the early 2010s, but it had security issues which were easy to exploit, its range was fairly limited in terms of what kinds of animations it could produce, and, as its most fatal flaw, it couldn’t run on mobile. Thus with the expanding use of smartphones and tablets, Flash became less and less practical as a tool for web developers, and Adobe began slowly preparing to kill it. On December 31st, 2020, Adobe sent Flash off to the farm where it could frolic and play in the digital sunshine, leaving many online communities facing a crisis. How do you preserve a text when its foundations have crumbled?
With Homestuck using Flash in such an integral way, the issue of preservation was an important one. After the finale, Hussie would post some short post-credits stories to Snapchat from October 2016 to August 2017, as well as a longer epilogue in April 2019, before stepping away from any formal involvement with the comic in 2020. In 2018, Hussie had given the distribution rights for Homestuck to VIZ Media, which primarily handled the English-language publication of several manga series, and had left the rights to the IP and the freedom to produce new work to former collaborators. Thus it was VIZ who took on the task of officially preserving Homestuck against the death of Flash.
To say their efforts were unsatisfactory would, I think, be paying them too great a compliment. The complex and highly detailed Flash animations were replaced with embedded YouTube links to low-quality screen-captures of the originals. The hours-long walkaround games were not translated at all, replaced with ‘choose your own adventure’ style pages of text and links. The official version of Homestuck as it currently exists fails to capture a lot of what made the comic work, because it removes a lot of the gamified elements of the comic that are so integral to its storytelling.
There are many snapshots of the website from before the walkaround games were taken down on the Wayback Machine, but the Flash emulator that archive.org uses is very inconsistent, frequently becoming stuck on looping loading screens or failing to process assets correctly. While the dubious preservation of the long Flash animations is a real issue on its own, the lack of any attempt to replicate the format of these longform games represents the loss of something essential to the comic. Homestuck is, throughout the whole of its story, intertwined with the visual and cultural language of video games. The loss of the complex interactivity of these panels fundamentally changes how the reader is permitted to engage with them and, by extension, with Homestuck’s narrative as a whole. The official version of Homestuck that exists online is no longer complete.
This incredibly poor preservation was the impetus behind the creation of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. In its most basic form, the Collection is simply a preserved and restored version of Homestuck, intact and in high quality, accessible through a downloadable client, rather than online — reducing the Collection down to this basic description does it a disservice. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection includes not just Homestuck, but all of Hussie’s prior work: Jailbreak, Bard Quest, and Problem Sleuth are in there, but so are the full contents of his first website, Team Special Olympics, alongside archived versions of his now-deleted accounts on various social media platforms, and copies of threads from the MSPA forums that he would later reference in the main comic. The Collection also includes material that Hussie released alongside Homestuck, like the in-fiction blog of one of the main characters, various short comics written by guest authors, and a full episode of an in-universe childrens’ cartoon.
These peripheral materials are interesting and provide context for some of the more obscure references throughout Homestuck, but many of them were not produced until well into the comic’s run, and assume an audience that is caught up with the most recent update, making them dangerously full of spoilers for the unaware new reader. This issue is solved by the appropriately named ‘new reader mode.’ One of a variety of useful accessibility tools included in the Collection, the new reader mode tracks which page a user has reached, and implements a universal spoiler cloak over the whole program, hiding all materials that were released after their most recent page’s publication. This tool is what transforms the Unofficial Homestuck Collection from an archive of a text, into an archive of an experience.
De Kosnik argues that fan-driven archiving serves as a way for fans to mediate their own temporal experience of a text, describing websites hosting fanworks as mechanisms which “maintain the possibility of individuals joining fandoms… long after a media text has ceased to air.” While De Kosnik’s focus is on archives of fanworks and their function in ongoing fan spaces, I would argue that this framework, which centers the impact of serialization on the dynamics of fan communities, fits extremely well when applied to the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. Homestuck was published serially over the course of seven years, accompanied by blog posts, side comics, music, and other pieces of peripheral media that were released in tandem with the comic itself.
Updates were highly anticipated events, and fan communities were structured around them — one user on Tumblr found an unlisted part of the MSPA forums where Hussie posted new pages before they were published, and this “MSPA Prophet” became a fixture of the fandom for their ability to predict when the next update would come. The event that was an update (or upd8, after the typing style of a popular character) was a central aspect of the experience of reading Homestuck during its publication, and it is one that is very difficult to recover now that the comic exists as a static, completed work. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection, through its new reader mode, functions as a solution to that absence. It does more than safeguard the reader against unwanted spoilers: it temporarily transforms Homestuck back into an incomplete text.
Homestuck makes use of the assumed preexisting knowledge of the reader, and their “intuitive familiarity” with various types of digital media and culture, especially ones which are inherently participatory. The story’s use of narrative motifs and referential easter-eggs allows Homestuck to function, in Hussie’s own words, as “both a story and a puzzle,” but that “There [are] a range of ways to interface with it[…] Failing to grasp everything shouldn’t preclude basic enjoyment, nor is it a symptom of failure by either the reader or the story.” In the most frequent example of repeated symbology in Homestuck, Hussie peppers the text with references to the number ‘413,’ simplified from April 13th, the day the comic began.
The story follows four friends who are all thirteen years old, many of the songs on the comic’s soundtrack are exactly four minutes and thirteen seconds long, and the timestamps on chat-logs show that characters frequently begin important conversations at precisely 4:13, to name just a few of the number’s appearances. The combination of puzzle and story in Homestuck extends beyond these kinds of motifs, however, and into the way Hussie employs referential humour.
Some of these references are fairly easy to catch; in Act 4, one of the main characters is gifted the Warhammer of Zillyhoo — a brightly coloured weapon which originally appeared in Problem Sleuth. Others, however, are much more obscure. The older brother of another main character runs a business creating bizarre, semi-ironic puppet pornography. Most of the audience read this as an absurdist joke about the internet’s love for offputting porn; the subset of fans who had been following Hussie for several years, or those who looked into Hussie’s early activity on the MSPA forums, however, would find themselves with new understanding of a long-running joke. This element of the experience of reading Homestuck is something that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection not only preserves, but makes readily accessible to the comic’s readers in a way that would not have been possible during the comic’s publication.
On a purely theoretical basis, I would argue that the Unofficial Homestuck Collection is valuable not just in the context of contemporary fan activity, but as a potentially valuable resource for future research. Homestuck is a foundational piece of the current cultural landscape, its influences permeating both digital and analog media in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways.
Undertale, titan of online culture that it is, was created by Toby Fox, who was the composer behind a large amount of the music in Homestuck and was, during the game’s production, living in Andrew Hussie’s basement. Tamsyn Muir, author of the Locked Tomb tetralogy, began her writing career as a prominent figure in the Homestuck fandom on Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. Although the reach of her original work has thoroughly outgrown her fandom roots, Muir includes sly references to Homestuck in several places in her books. Hell, one of the animators working on Bluey, a cartoon aimed at very young children, included references to Homestuck in the backgrounds of episodes they worked on, as easter-eggs for the benefit of parents in the know. All of this is to say that Homestuck has its hooks deep within the culture of the Internet, and its impacts will, I think, be felt for a long time yet.
The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is certainly not immune to digital decay or link rot, but it is resistant to them, since it is hosted on a large and well established website (GitHub), and, once downloaded, can be accessed without an internet connection, and shared freely. For the hypothetical future researcher, the Collection contains resources to mitigate the frustration of trying to hunt down pieces of contextual or peripheral material by packaging them with the text itself — it functions like a sourcebook.
Bibliography
Bamboshu, and GiovanH. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection. 2020. https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/
De Kosnik, Abigail. Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10248.001.0001.
Glaser, Tim. “Homestuck as a Game: A Webcomic between Playful Participation, Digital Technostalgia, and Irritating Inventory Systems.” In Comics and Videogames. Edited by Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein, and Jan-Noel Thon. 96–112. Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003035466-8.
Hussie, Andrew. Homestuck. MS Paint Adventures, 2009-2016. https://homestuck.com.
Nakhaie, FS. “Reproduce and Adapt: Homestuck in Print and Digital (Re)Incarnations.” Convergence, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565221141961.
Read MS Paint Adventures. “Statistics.” Last modified April 7, 2018. http://readmspa.org/stats/.
Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence 25, no. 5-6 (2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954.
#ray speaks#homestuck#413#the unofficial homestuck collection#andrew hussie#uhhhh#homestuck studies#i fucking guess#if you notice any errors in this don't hesitate to let me know! i always try to keep living versions of all my old essays#so that if something new comes along i can add it for future reference or easier editing if i ever want to get it published#also this is Fucking Long and i will not apologize
63 notes
·
View notes
Note
hihi!! I really love Ur writings SMSM <33(Srsly they make me giggle n kick my feet)!! And I just wanted to request Qiu and Tamarack with an MC that likes/and is good at singing? (Preferably step 2, but since I rlly don't wanna burden Step 1 would be really lovely as well)
:))
Author’s Note: *laying on my stomach on top of my bed , writing in a fluffy journal while kicking my legs back and forth and giggling*
Pairing(s): Qiu Lin x Reader and Tamarack Baumann x MC
🗒️🍂
QIU LIN🗒️
They always loved your singing , they find it one of the most satisfying sounds they’ve ever heard.
Will beg you to let them sit and listen in.
If your singing along with a song then they might just get up and start dancing along.(why did that rhyme omg , in my poet era)
You guys would make such a cute dynamic duo though
If there’s ever a talent show , they will begrudgingly hopefully ask if you want to do it together.
They joke that you should make a soundcloud and post your singing there.
You kinda ruin most music for them from how much they love your voice lol
You and your childhood friend, Qiu were hanging out in your living room. It was late, your mom was still at work and Qiu’s parents decided on a spontaneous dinner date and trusted Qiu wouldn’t get into any trouble while they were gone.
Which Qiu thought was stupid, I mean what trouble could they get into so late at night?
They sat on one of the few mismatched couches and messed around with one of your mom’s pillows that had a loose string.
You were sitting on the floor, with an older disk player near you. You had been digging around your room and found it under your bed and decided to play some music.
“Which disk do you wanna listen to? The first or the second one?” You had asked them, holding up the two shiny disks.
“I don’t care, You can pick,” Qiu replied, shrugging while holding the pillow closer to their chest. They didn’t mind what music was played, just as long as they could enjoy your company.
“The second one then” you proposed, popping it into the player and clicking ‘play’.
The both of you were happy with the choice when a soft melody rang throughout the room. It didn’t have any lyrics, it sounded like something Tamarack’s grandparents may have played in the background while entertaining guest in their “drawing room”.
“Nice,” Qiu assured, flopping down onto the couch.
The two of you sat quietly while listening to the music, you swayed a little and started to hum.
Qiu perked up at the sound but didn’t say anything, worried that you might stop out of embarrassment.
They propped up their cheek with their palm and just watched as you turned that hum into a melody with a for once, at peace smile.
They really liked your voice.
TAMARACK BAUMANN🍂
She thinks you out-sing any famous pop star or church choir any day. She honestly thinks your voice is so angelic.
She loves it when you give her mini concerts while you two walk in the woods together.
I BET both my lungs that you and Tamarack have duets 100%
You two make a lot of music together and record it on one of her Opa’s camcorders.
Her Omi asks the both of you if you can try and cover a Frank Sintra song often.
If you do choir or singing lessons either at school or music hall then expect to practice with her nearly every day.
Tamarack can never duet with another singer because they aren’t you, and can never replicate the melody.
It was late afternoon, a few hours after school ended. Tamarack sat by her windowsill, reading a book about what and what not to feed forest critters when she flinched at the sudden pang of a pebble being thrown at her window.
She decided to look out and giggled seeing who it was, she opened the window and called down.
“MC, If you wanted to come in!… You could have just knocked!” Tamarack chuckled behind her hand, it always made her a little giddy when you would stand below her window like some Shakespearean love story.
“Nah! This is quick, just sit up there and listen!” You gave the ginger a thumbs up before pulling out a bulky boombox that may be older than some of the adults you guys knew.
“Pfft, What are you doing?” Tamarack kept laughing.
“I am going to sing something!!!” You yelled up before you pressed played and let the music play out a little.
Tamarack’s laughter quieted down at that, she paused for a moment before asking.
“Are you trying to serenade me?”
You also paused before answering. “Yeah, that's basically it”
You then lowered the volume of the old boombox and began to sing along with the song’s melody. You didn’t lose eye contact while you sang to her, so this moment felt special and intimate.
Tamarack put a hand to her cheek and watched down with an increasingly growing blush on her cheeks.
She listened to you singing to her and thought quietly to herself. ‘She didn’t deserve such an adorable gesture from you. You were way too good for her. You probably were…doing.. this.. to ..be ..n..ice-‘
Her self-deprecating thoughts were slowly drowned out by your singing, It was sweet of you. After all, Tamarack did love your singing.
#olnf tamarack#tamarack baumann x reader#tamarack baumann x mc#olnf mc#olnf#olnf qiu#our life now and forever#orion4ever#our life tamarack#our life qiu#qiu lin x mc#qiu lin x reader#qiu lin#fanfic#gb patch games#gb patch
111 notes
·
View notes
Text
Still going strong with Abe’s Oddysee but in the Ultimate Cartoon Recap style! (Still a Work in Progress obviously)
Still gotta add a Scrub/slave and Mullok without his suit from the game’s good ending. Also, I know Meeches aren’t technically a part of the game… but 1; they where going to be originally but got cut due to disk space. and 2; although they don’t appear in the game, their lore of being extinct is still an important piece of the game’s plot lol.
I’ll be honest tho, IMO, they don’t look exactly like what they probably would look like if in an actual video… but oh well! It’s still a really fun style to try and replicate lol!
lol
Therapist: “Chad Shrykull isn’t real, Chad Shrykull can’t hurt you.”
Chad Shrykull:
#oddworld#work in progress#WIP#cartoon recap style attempt#oddworld scrab#oddworld paramite#oddworld meech#oddworld abe#oddworld mudokon#oddworld glukkon#oddworld mullok#oddworld shrykull#oddworld big face#oddworld scrubs#Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
I had the oddest dream last night.
Aliens had finally contacted earth. Their ship was sort of classic in it's own way-plate like, more of a glowing disk of light than a ship. And they sent down like this message.
'We want to make contact, but many of us on board are sick. We don't want to risk cross contamination with you and accidently infect you. Please send a soft tissue sample for us to run tests on to make sure you can't catch what we have.'
So after the usual long drawn out debate that happens in politics and government and all that bullshit, this soft tissue sample is given to the ship. Which instead of like a tractor beam or whatever, it was these long sort of tentacles that came down that were organic and inorganic and pulled the sample case up into the ship.
And after a while of time, we finally get a message back of 'We've run some tests, you don't seem susceptible to what we have, contact should be okay.'
And we finally get footage of the first contact and the aliens are just. Very small. They're shaped and about the size of Italian greyhounds and had this soft pinkish skin that was also translucent so you could see all their organs functioning and these glossy fish like eyes and they trembled whenever they would stop moving like they were cold. And they had these soft little voices, like little kids or fluttershy from my little pony.
And they said the reason why they came here is because they are expecting to die soon. They understood from the start that their mission of exploration would be an indefinite one-way trip-that they would never return home, and their bodies are so vastly changed from what they started as-having evolved and changed to support their conscious minds during the 'light travel', it's highly possible that they wouldn't even be recognized even if they were to get home. They were all just very very ill and did not expect to live much longer and if they were to all die, they would like to do it on nice soft warm ground rather than the cold interior of their ship. That this was the one kindness they asked of the dominate life form of this foreign planet was the luxury to pass away peacefully on the ground.
The dream kinda got spotty around there-you know how when your brain is gradually waking up it starts skipping around?
But apparently these little chicken greyhound things just had a form of a cold and some nightquil and chicken noodle soup fixed that right up and they all got very nice clothes to wear because they no longer grew hair on their bodies and were perpetually chilled by the open air.
And they went to a state dinner but their digestive system and their mouths were so changed-they basically needed everything blended into a smooth paste so their weird anteater like mouths could slurp it up and just weirdly enough-America was endeared to these little raw chicken dog things. And people started to informally call their race 'Lakias' after the dog that went to space and never got to come home-given their reference to them knowing their trip into space was going to be a one way visit. (they never actually disclosed the name of their race)
As for their ship it's like...harder to explain. We didn't get much out of it because it was made from a mineral not found on Earth and an energy source foreign to Earth that was just impossible to replicate.
But at least we got some cool dogs out of it.
40 notes
·
View notes
Text
I'm out of ideas on how to fix this error.
I've had this object error pop up once every sim day in every lot, since at least July 2022. What I tried:
I ran What Caused This with this error log, all the results that came up were "secondary possible", which is the least likely category to be the culprit. I loaded the game with all these files alone and I could not replicate the error.
I ran HCDU Plus and removed every mod that affected the Function - Main BHAV, as well as others that were not meant to be used together. The error persisted.
I removed every weather mod, like Immersive rain and SophieDavid's lot-based weather controls. The error persisted.
I sorted mods by creation date to try and find any mods that were installed around July 2022. Removed any mods around that date. Still, the error persisted.
When the error pops up, I always hit reset. I don't even know if the error does anything after that. I noticed that in late autumn, sims going outside will sometimes have high temperature seemingly for no reason, but I can't be sure this is related to it.
My only option left is doing to 50/50 method, which is a monumental task when my mods folder alone takes up 400 MB of disk space, with 2735 files.
So, before I try that, has anyone experienced this specific error before and knows what could cause it? Or is there any other solution I can try besides 50/50?
UPDATE
Yesterday, before going to bed, I deleted a bunch more mods that were conflicting, and while testing today, the errors stopped. But of course, I was disorganized and tired and I don't know which mod did it. I'm going to have to organize my mods more carefully.
15 notes
·
View notes
Note
Is the house of m headdress based on anything because I feel like whatever they were going for they missed it and landed somewhere in lampshade territory
The clothing designs in House of M are super interesting, particularly for the Magnus family. Outside of the stiff, Western military uniforms the men wear in official settings, they all tend to wear long, loose, heavily embroidered garments that feel simultaneously South Asian, North African, and Eastern European in design. Despite the myriad of influences, I don't think they replicate anything one-to-one, and some of the choices, such as Lorna's bra top and absurdly low skirt, are decidedly non-traditional.
A lot of the stuff also gets simplified in later comics, so nowadays HoM Magneto wears kind of a normal bathrobe, and HoM Wanda's sumptuous robe has become a weird ketchup-and-mustard tube.
Love those monogrammed slippers, papo.
Anyways, to answer your question, I'm not sure what Wanda's headpiece is supposed to be. Her jewelry features a lot of gold disks or medallions, as does Lorna's. While that motif is present in many cultures, it is a visual trope that's very commonly associated with Romani women, to the point of stereotyping. The use of galbi (gold, gold coins) in jewelry and accessories is popular in many communities, but it doesn't usually look like this.
This style actually reminds me a lot of Amazigh jewelry, but Wanda's headdress, specifically, recalls the caps and veils found throughout various Balkan cultures, particularly in bridal costumes. I'm not an expert, so I can't verify these images, but you can see where I'm coming from. The lampshade effect is kind of weird, but I believe her face is obscured because the Wanda we're seeing here is actually an illusion-- the "real" Wanda is hidden deep within the palace with her children.
45 notes
·
View notes
Text
According to people who got to play Indigo Disk early LEGALLY after being invited by Nintendo/TPC, we know a few things
Spoilers below but nothing story related, just mechanics, difficulty, visuals, and performance.
Positive:
1. The difficulty is apparently very high and there's a reason they want you to beat the rest of the story first.
To elaborate, someone mentioned trainers with level 80 and HIGHER pokemon- keep in mind only a small handful of trainers- such as Red or Barry- have had pokemon anywhere NEAR that level.
Second, it seems that Double Battles take a big priority, which is interesting because we only had a handful in Rime's gym prior.
Third, opponents will apparently use items and Competetive strategies- think like the Elite Four in BDSP that full use of items and creative movesets or battles in Colosseum that make use of specific strategies- in their case things like swapping Slaking's ability or explosion and earthquake with a levitating Misdreavus.
All of this sounds like it's meant to replicate competitive play to some extent- which makes sense, given BBA is meant for the best of the best battlers. On a personal note, this excites me, because it sounds like we'll finally have to use strategy, and I'm somewhat hopeful after Teal Mask's spike of difficulty towards the end.
Continuing on:
2. We apparently have access to 4 new uniforms akin to N/U Academy- probably expected but it's good to have confirmation.
3. Graphics apparently APPEAR improved- at least, if I understand correctly, various people who played have at least complimented the textures and colors.
4. Music is interesting :)
5. The Terarium is apparently a tad bigger than Kitakami but not as big as Paldea.
The bad:
There's still problems with performance, to nobody's surprise, and this was even pointed out by Serebii himself. It's something that should be pointed out, because we're now a year after release and have dlc, and still have slow downs and performance drops. Of course, they probably won't fix that. After all, once ID drops, they'll probably wrap things up and move production to the next project.
I'm not gonna sugar coat it. I'm excited for the good, increasingly frustrated with the bad and I just feel embarrassed. I can hope that maybe there will be some slight stability patch like they did to make PC loading better, but I highly doubt it'll be the performance overhaul the majority of us want.
But from what good there is, I do look forward to that. Despite performance somehow being worse in Teal Mask than base game, I actually did enjoy it and was pleasantly surprised by its difficulty spikes, and like Crown Tundra to IoA, this sounds like more of the good.
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
Bracelets
Four drabbles, one for each girl, about their bracelets.
Written for Fandom Empire Prompt Tables 2024 - Prompt: "Shiny"
Read on AO3
Flowers
Yuzu held her bracelet up to the light, angling it this way and that. The light reflected off of it, bright when it caught just right – but for all that it was shiny, it didn’t shine the way that it had before.
The light she had seen wasn’t merely reflected; it had emanated from the gem on her bracelet. She was almost certain of that.
But Yuzu hadn’t yet managed to replicate it on demand.
That magic existed in the world wasn’t something she doubted, exactly, but it wasn’t something she ever expected to encounter, either.
What was going on?
Birds
“You’re always wearing that shiny bracelet,” a classmate said. “It’s lovely. Where did you get it?”
“It was a gift,” Ruri answered. She didn’t actually remember, but she had a vague feeling that that much was true.
“Oh? From an admirer, perhaps?” her companion asked with a teasing and eager lilt to her voice.
Ruri shook her head.
“From your older brother, then?” the other asked, not quite as enthusiastically as before.
“I think so,” Ruri said slowly, after considering it for a moment. “I don’t fully remember, but it would make sense.”
But it didn’t seem quite right, either.
Winds
The parts weren’t in perfect condition, but they were in far better shape than what Rin usually found.
They were also more than she could afford. But maybe she could sell or trade something to make up the difference?
Rin eyed her bracelet. People had told her it seemed too nice of a trinket for a Common to wear. If she was lucky, the shiny green gem or the silver band might be worth a lot.
But some inscrutable feeling stayed her hand.
Besides, she’d probably never get a fair price for it, when she didn’t know its true worth.
Moon
“Cowards,” Selena said, coldly glaring at her now defeated opponents.
She advanced on the trembling heap that she was ashamed to call her fellow students, and scooped up the shiny bracelet, taking back what was rightfully hers.
She was all the more pissed that this was what they had stolen. Oh, she would have been pissed if they had taken her deck or Duel Disk, instead, but that, at least, would have been a strategic theft.
But her bracelet? The one thing she had that wasn’t from Academia, her constant reminder that there was more out there?
That was unforgivable.
11 notes
·
View notes
Note
M!A Mundie now remembers everything before he became a cog.
[ OVERRIDE V.0.0.2: DISABLED ]
[ ORGANIC USER DATA ACCESS GRANTED ]
[ DIGITAL REPLICATION ENABLED ]
[ LOADING... ]
[ LOADING... ]
[ LOADING... ]
[ CONVERSION COMPLETE ]
[ NEURAL MEMORY DATA WRITTEN TO CORE STORAGE ]
I.
I remember now...
[ WARNING: CORE TEMPERATURE RISING ]
[ WARNING: REMAINING DISK SPACE LESS THAN 10% ]
[ WARNING: DANGEROUSLY HIGH NEURAL ACTIVITY ]
...I wanna go home. M-my core hurts...
...my ...Core?
#ask#anon#answered#m!a#Access Granted!#// not sure how long i'll have this go so i'll set it to 5-10 asks default#0/10
11 notes
·
View notes
Note
Do you think you could make a Quirk inspired by Red X from the Teen Titans series. Most of his abilities come from his Zynothium battlesuit, but he's so gadget-focused that I can't really pin down what a single Quirk for him would look like.
So the you are right that Red X and others like him are hard to pin down because of how many tools they have on hand, everything from basic boomerangs to high grade explosives. I've already done Quirks that can work with those kinds of characters with "Handpick" and "Pocket", but I still think there is untapped potential in a utility belt-eqsue idea.
I see it working as an Emitter type Quirk allows the user to form red and black disks from their lower wrists and slide them into their hands. The disks have the same consistency as steel and can be thrown as projectiles. The true power of the Quirk comes from the user's ability to mold the discs in their hands. The user may bend and stretch the disks for their usage, changing their size and shape to anything smaller then a bo staff. The tools can be altered further in simple ways, like using their fingers to sharpen something to give it an edge or stretching out a part of it to act as string for a bow. This gives the user a great mix of options, pulling out all sorts of tools they may need. They can form binds to lock people down, damage foes with different projectiles, make lock picks to break security, form new weapons on the fly, or just never need to buy tools again. Though the user a brief second to shape the tools, and adjusting them can weaken their durability, like a bo staff only being as strong as wood. The user cannot add drastically different properties to the material, like making it explosive, or replicate fine details with it, and discs cannot be warped together for more material. A possible name for the Quirk could be "Multitool".
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
I find games that use blocky or pixelly art styles and graphics often really beautiful and interesting (thinking of games I've seen played off of Haunted PS2 Demo Disk I think? PS1? Can't rember exactly) and I enjoy the feeling of like embracing this aesthetic that was in part a result of the constraints of the current technology.
Cue thinking about "What you find distasteful about a new medium will be replicated once it can be overcome"
I wonder if games in the future will do the same with the sometimes uncanny Untenable Realism of many current large games. Maybe not, bc it sometimes seems that's less a stylistic and intentional choice for the games that have it and more a show of Expense if that makes sense. U can tell this game's Worth It big money because of the number of pores u can count on the character model's nose
7 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Watcher AU
The Watcher AU isn’t a world made from different choices but purpsely built by the Architects* to live within the void between the universes; a world dedicated to maintaining the Pandoran Multiverse and all of it’s people; Na’vi and Human alike.
It’s the heart to protect the natural ‘canon’ timeline from contamination from human and Na’vi alike but other problems of technology and other advancement in the AUs often lead to multiverse or timeline travels which can be disastrous.
The creation of Watchers replicated known faces and personalities of those within the typical Pandora world. From Human to Na’vi but with notable differences, for the sake of recognising their AU: Watchers all have dark blue eyes -regardless of Species- and slightly desaturated skin.
The Watchers, aren’t classes as living; they’re amortal so they don’t age or wither with time; designed to last and otherwise cannot be killed. They can be hurt but Watchers have a regenerative healing factor which helps them when either human or Na’vi are hostile to them.
Watcher’s Gifts:
Amortality
World Divergence Sense
Regenerative Healing
Teleportation
Intuitive Multilingualism
Shapeshifting (to and from Na’vi and human)
Adaptive Learning
Due to the scale of their work, the Watcher’s Main base of operations is comprised of both Na’vi and human like designs. It follows a blurred mixture to compromise the mixture of cultures as workers are recruited from AUs and other Divergencies. So technology is a necessity, the paramilitary of both human and Na’vi is necessary.
There is a main structure, the Worldtree, that looks like a giant version of Hometree (but much bigger) but under the ‘ground’ it becomes something akin to Hells’s Gate. Areas and furniture are designed to cater to both size differences and the Worldtree and it’s entire perimeter sits on a disk-world than a planet. This allows ever-expansion without needing to apply to physics.
What is apart of the Watcher’s flat-world (imagine the image above had a huge tree in the middle) are smaller areas called Districts. Districts are developed for AUs that face collapse, collision or evacuated. They’re designed for each need depending on the species for their needs. A water reef, or a forest or jungle.
Having the populations serves as keeping people alive but also helping provide new blood for the Watcher’s who need warriors of species to keep the multiverse in control than chaos but they let the worlds and Aus expand for the sake of life.
The Architects need the worlds to develop just as much as some need to die, like a life cycle but on a cosmic scale to prevent energy becoming stagnated and that would lead to corruption of the worlds. All worlds are connected via a specific sentient energy of ‘Eywa’ is part of in each pandora; this gives the Watchers an idea of what’s happening on what variation of which Pandora while they register each AU.
The Watchers recruit from other AUs, even if they don’t recruit from their own districts but there’s a lot of protocols behind it and there’s usually a reason the workers would need to have to recruit unless, ‘Eywa’ of that world specifically requested the chosen being to be recruited.
Those recruited are taken in to the Watcher AU to start training.
Training in combat, hand-to-hand, is mandatory for everyone, anyone injured is taken to be healed and training in both human and Na’vi technology and environment is also a requirement.
All recruitments will often have an avatar made for them Human = Na’vi, Na’vi = Human, this allows them to interact with both sides and for empathy but also to adjust to each lifestyle a little easier. In events when it’s necessary, they’re able to transfer their minds to new bodies as well. Even newly recruited that can’t be healed, spare variant avatars of either species can be used as a last resort.
Recruits are often put into ‘family units’ when variants of families are recovered or recruited; this allow them to become a tight knit comminute for their cause of protection and they’re more familiar with known faces as well. A watcher is often places as keeping an eye out for them.
For the sake of convenience. all are given a tattoo (2mc big) to the base of their throat to allow for them to breath easy in either human atmosphere or Pandora’s. Relieving the need for a mask entirely.
In a few cases, certain recruits are gifted more tattoos that allow for other things, such as gifts that are consider supernatural, akin to the Watcher’s gifts.
All worlds made are often named, in most part a serial number but that can change for those who are requited out of it, the names are derived from the cause or relegation to the change made to be considered unique. Those requited from ‘named’ aus are often referred to their MWD (Multiverse World Designation)
Exile AU, Jake Sully = Exile Jake.
Multiple of people that share the same world also have the same MWD, but when spoken, the WMD Is said first, then their personal designation. A room could be filled with Jake Sully Variants, but MWD keeps them identifiable and uniqiue. Everyone needs a MWD to work with the Watchers.
#watcher au#avatar au#avatar#avatar the way of water#avatar james cameron#jake sully#neytiri#neyteyam#mo'at#grace augustine#lo'ak#tonowari#ronal#tsu'tey#eytukan#ao'nung#tukitrey#tsireya#norm spellman#kiri#avatar kiri#avatar watcher au#miles quaritch#spider socorro
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
another 45 min work figure study. still aggressively gridding it up– maybe tomorrow i should shake it up and try loosely interpreting the image instead of trying to replicate it? also i accidentally selected the wrong pose from everyone else today lmao oops… well i know what i'll be doing for tomorrow's
under the cut is a timelapse again (im being quite cavalier with my disk space lately)
felt easier than last time, probably because the side angle is easier to work with? or maybe i just got enough sleep last night so my brain is working this morning lol... once again committed the mistake of eyeballing color between my two monitors. i tried to colorbalance the green into the shadows but i probably shouldve just left it alone. it needs more work to re-integrate all the colors back together, but i know if i touch this i'll end up working on it for the rest of the day. and i refuse! i have actual job work to do!!!
#figdraw#ref studies#man tumblr ate the first version of this post and i had to retype part of it.#this is what i get for uploading video
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Origin of the Computer Virus
At the time of it's creation, it was not referred to as a computer virus but a theoretical concept of a computer virus was presented by Hungarian scientist and mathematician John Von Neuman.
It was presented in a series of lectures titled "The Theory 8 Organization of Complicated Automata." These lectures were conducted at the University of Illinois in 1944 and published by the same university in 1966. The basis of his theory was that as computer programs become more intricate and are able to mirror the human nervous system, eventually it would make sense if it were able to self-replicate just like a biological virus and cause any number of threats to the host system.
First Computer Virus Ever Created
In 1971, the first official computer virus was created by Bob Thomas from BBN Technologies. It was called the "creeper" named after a villain from the cartoon series Scooby-Doo.
It was initially an experimental program with malicious intent was ingrained in its code. When a computer was infected with the program, it would print this message on their machine:
Then, it would move along in the network and find another computer to display the same message without damaging any files. That same year a colleague of Bob's would create a similar program called "Reaper". However, instead of displaying any messages it would look for copies of Creeper and and delete them. Regarding this program the first "anti-virus" solution.
The Rabbit Virus
In 1974, the "Rabbit" virus was created. Given this name because of speed at which it replicated itself. This was different from the previous virus mentioned because it was contained to one machine and created with malicious intent. It was created by a disgruntled employee and mainly intended to replicate itself until the system ultimately crashed.
"Animal"
A Year later, the first "Trojan Horse" was developed. This is a type of malware that will disguise itself as a non-threatening program in order of not being detected and deleted by a user or anti-virus program. They cannot be replicated, but can attach itself to user program files or games that are exchanged then executed by end-user activity.
A computer programmer named John Walker created a program called "animal" which initially looked like a game that asked the user 20 questions to determine the animal they were thinking of. In the background, it was using a program called pervade which was a piece of code he programmed to copy this game into every single directory that user had access to.
Elk Cloner
In 1982, another virus emerged created by a 15-year-old high school student in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania named Rich Skrenta. This virus is considered to be one of the first viruses to leave the confines of where it was created and first ever personal computer (PC) viruses. It was transmitted through floppy disks and would copy itself to run in the memory of the computer it was installed in. It would also copy itself onto any floppy disk inserted into the PC. This viruses was initially intended to be a joke and was not programmed with any malicious intent, but was noted for how quickly it spread. The only notable thing it did was display a message when the system was booted for the 50th time:
The "Brain" Virus
In 1986, there were two brothers based in Pakistan named Basit and Amjad Farooq.
They ran a computer store at that time and were growing frustrated at customers using pirated copies of their computer program. They created this virus to get back at those users. This was considered a boot sector virus which would alter the boot sector of any floppy disk used to copy their software. It was referred to the brain virus due to the name of the brother's company and the logo printed on their personal floppy disks. It is regarded as the first IBM PC virus. When users would try to boot their system they were presented with a message that read "welcome to the dungeon" along with binary editing code.
The brothers insisted that this virus was simply created to bring awareness to the user that they were using a pirated version of their program, however it was reported that some users experienced data loss and other issues. This was most likely caused by variants of the virus being spread. This is the virus that would go on to inspire the creation of the anti-virus software Mcafee since it caused the creator of the software to lose their personal work files.
12 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Return to the Underground
(Starter for @funtimes-n-faz-kids)
Michael sighed as he rode down the elevator. He honestly thought he'd never have to return to this place again, but, he couldn't exactly hide anywhere else. Plus, he had to find out if any of the animatronics that used him as a skin suit had returned.
He touched his cheek, and his prototype illusion disk was still on, but, it only made his face mostly normal, with patches of rotten skin and empty black eyes with white dots in them indicating that his soul was still residing in his body. He wore a black wig, as his illusion disk couldn't replicate hair just yet.
Upon hearing the chime of the elevator doors opening, he looked at the vent before him, many memories flooding into him as he crawled through, the robotic voice calling out the motion being triggered.
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Prompt: Tony realising that his technology was used on Natasha. (Thanks friend, this prompt matched with another one).
an: this has been taken from a WIP that I started ages ago and moulded into the prompt. Warnings for discussions of child experimentation (child abuse), red room, child illness and weapons. (Bwf2022, 1.7k)
the world I live in
Tony thinks he’s being sneaky. His suit is scratchy, and he can feel the bow tie knot on his neck as he ducks his head, avoiding eye contact.
Russia is cold, and he’s thankful for the coat that hangs over his shoulders, the banquet in its closing stages, he decided it’s time to move.
The real reason he’s here, undercover, is that he thinks someone is replicating his tech.
The warning had come from one of Obadiah’s subservients who had defected and since become a friend.
An informant at least. It’s not tech he ever wants to become public, or made ever again.
Sighing heavily, Tony feels the weight of all his wrongs on his shoulders and tighten the noose around his heart. He feels he’ll never be able to atone.
He hears Peppers words float in the back of his mind.
‘At least you’re trying.’
Tony’s glasses warn him of soldiers approaching, give him layout of the building and he hacks the door closest to him in seconds, letting himself in.
It’s an office if some sort, he realises as he hides himself against the back of the door, shutting it gently behind him.
Taking a deep breath, Tony schools himself, makes the layout appear as a hologram in front of him. He needs to get to the elevator at the end of the hallway. Down a level and the first door on the right seems to be the lab.
Rubbing his face, he curses Obadiah again.
Kids.
Who the fuck tests immunology nanotechnology on kids?
He hates his technology sometimes. The nanotech was supposed to be for children’s hospitals, to build the immunosuppressed back to normalcy, so they could do the things they want like go to playgrounds, be around their friends.
It was supposed to be a good thing. But like everything Tony seems to touch, it had become a weapon.
Testing on children so they never got sick. So they could be weapons.
His blood boils.
He exits the room and walks fast to the elevator, hacks it quickly and turns as it descends. He tries not to panic as his nerves rise his chest.
“Jarvis?” He questions. “How many people in the lab?”
There’s a pause.
“One sir.”
He’s confused, but pleased. One person is okay. He can handle that. Likely, he can even maybe just sedate them.
Entering the room, he sees the woman straight away, her blonde hair in contrast of the dark room.
“Hello?” He calls, not wanting to hurt her.
She turns and they both stare at each other.
His heart stops and his mouth hangs open.
“Romanoff?”
She seems as shocked as he is.
“Stark?”
She recovers quicker than he does.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
He points stupidly at the computer.
“It’s my old tech. I wanted to destroy it.”
A strange look passed across her face.
“What are you doing here?” He asks.
He steps over a body, closer to where her USB is plugged in. He types quickly, as she looks over his shoulder.
“Are you here with SHIELD?”
He continues to question her, but she doesn’t answer as she watches him carefully.
“You missed one,” she hisses.
He looks again and realises she’s right. He does it again and runs the termination program.
He holds up the usb for her and she takes it, tucking it into her breast pocket.
“It’s a muted version, if it’s for shield,” he tells her.
She shrugs.
“It’s not.”
He watches carefully as she places two clay disks on the servers with detonator switches.
“They don’t get this, again,” she says, more to herself.
He moves toward the door, and she follows linking her arm to his.
“You have an exit strategy?” She asks, ducking her body into his as they ride the elevator up.
“I have a very fast car?”
Natasha laughs.
“That’ll do.”
.
It wasn’t for shield, he realises, as Jarvis hacks the database of missions. Something he told Fury he wouldn’t do, but given the shock of seeing her as made him curious, and well. He doesn’t do well with curiosity.
He offers her a flight home and she takes it, perhaps preferring the comforts of a private jet than economy.
“Why?” He asks, three hours in.
She looks up like she knew the question was coming.
He stares at her and she looks like she’s going to lie.
“It’s important,” she shrugs, “for me.”
He doesn’t want to ask.
“Why?”
There’s an hour of silence as she doesn’t answer his question.
She hands him the USB.
“I didn’t realize, how far back your technology went. How much was tested,” she pauses.
“I was one of the ones they tested it on.”
The sentence drops and it’s like all the air is gone from the room.
He doesn’t know what to say, and she is clearly uncomfortable with the revelation. She excuses herself and sits in the unmanned cockpit, leaving him to his thoughts.
It takes him a while but he knows it’s now or never to continue to talk about it.
“How?” He asks, encroaching on her space. God she looks small, he things as she brings her knees to her chin, curling in a ball on the oversized chair.
“A series of unfortunate events,” she mutters.
But he pushes harder. If he can understand what, and why and how, maybe he can make sure it doesn’t happen again.
He opens his mouth but she silences him with a look.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He perhaps understands why, it’s not a natural thing to have your immunity played with and subjected to testing… the more he thinks of her words the more curious he is.
“I was the one they tested it on,” she’d said, but who was they? And how was it tested.
He looks over to her curiously, and there’s a faraway stare in her eyes. The dazed look is accompanied by a shallowness of breath and he throws a blanket over to her, concerned.
“Get some rest,” he decides to tell her, “we’ll land in an hour.”
.
Natasha knows it’s not the end of this; that like her, he’s going to keep pushing until he gets an answer. Get some rest, he said but all she can think is that he’s going to be digging.
She sighs, feeling guilty that said anything in the first place. Then he wouldn’t feel bad about the unknown uses of his technology.
Dragging herself up, she goes to sit next to him in the cockpit and sinks into the chair.
“You can’t tell anyone,” she opens.
In all reality it likely doesn’t matter if he does; and this might be an unfair thing to say, making him keep it to himself.
“Do you want to pinky swear on it?” He asks, and Natasha realizes she’s been quiet for a while.
She didn’t mean to lose her train of thought.
“Do you know about the Red Room?”
There’s a look of shock, then pity as dominos fall into place for Tony.
Natasha’s age, gender, bits of her upbringing she’s alluded to.
The last emotion she thinks is rage.
“You?” He asks.
“Me,” she nods to confirm.
“How did the Red Room use my technology on you?” He asks, his face careful now.
She thinks it’s curiosity that is his overriding feeling.
“They did experiments,” her words now are careful.
He lets her talk, or not talk, as the case may be as she looks into the darkening sky.
“When your nanotechnology was in it’s early stages, they would inject us, the nanoadjuvants would carry immunomodulatory properties used to deliver vaccine antigens for every disease they could think of,” she pauses.
“Sometimes, it made us sick.”
Tony looks murderous.
She ignores it.
It’s inert rage and there’s nothing he can do now.
“Some died?” he asks, voice low.
She thinks of Ruthie and Aaliyah, the disease that made them seize until they died, or Savannah as she was coughing in the bed, crying for her mother.
“Some died,” she confirms.
He doesn’t say anything. What can he say?
“It was a long time ago,” she clarifies.
It’s not his fault. He didn’t sell it to the Russians. She doubts that he even knew.
The plane lowers its descent, and Natasha is thankful that this flight is almost over.
The silence is heavy.
“You couldn’t have known.”
Tony stares straight ahead, shell shocked and sad.
“Even if you had of know,” she tries, “you couldn’t have done anything about it.”
He swallows hard, and she finds herself interested in his emotions. If anyone tries to tell her that Tony is an unfeeling automaton, she thinks she’d hit them.
He feels deeper than most, likely knows the power he holds with all his weaponry and money.
And he carries it all on his own shoulders.
The plane lowers again, the flight almost over; she plans to meet Clint and Maria later, wonders if she should invite him to come with them.
“What are you doing later?” she asks, feeling generous.
“You knew that it was my technology that killed your… you knew and you didn’t tell me? Didn’t want to get revenge?” He doesn’t look at her.
“You’re still my friend?”
Her heart stutters.
“Yeah Shell Head, I’m still your friend.”
He nods.
“Can I… what can I do?”
She shrugs.
“The Red Room is gone, Clint and I made sure of that. Hopefully it won’t ever be used again.”
The plane touches down.
Natasha gathers her things, and thanks him for the lift.
She feels like she’s leaving him in a depression, in trauma, and she doesn’t like it.
“Will you be okay?” she asks.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I won’t tell anyone.”
His head is bowed.
“It’s not your fault,” she emphasises.
“Still,” he says.
They stand at the door in a limbo of apologies.
“I’ll see you round Tony,” she tells him.
Parting ways, she leaves him, hoping he won’t dwell in the past.
.
#natasha romanoff#black widow#tony stark fic#natasha romanoff fic#Natasha Romanoff & Tony Stark#Natasha and Tony#black widow fic#Ironman fic#red room#child experimentation tw
34 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
shadowcatgirl09
The Chaotic Angel
m4rkzen
hero
vexsextex
Untitled
chicxsims
Quiet, She’s Daydreaming
kosmaks
i bet on losing dogs