Whut

winzler:

spicer-motherfucking-lovejoy:

grey-sw:

winzler:

Imma gonna bore the hell out of y’all with these.

So awesome. I especially love the solar sailer and tiny!arena…

winzler seriously how are you real oh my god

Update!

And yes, my dream is to become the lovechild of Mead and Giraud.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaay! I am doing absolutely (almost) NOTHING today and I am going to celebrate it by doing something. Like another drabblet.

I’ve been meaning to do this since before I started my manic work-travel schedule over half a month ago, but finally, here, have the next installment to the gridscapes-inspired writing (and wooooooooooooo how ‘bout some of that Beck and Tronzler can’t wait for the next/first episode):

Gridscape 1 Drabblet
Gridscape 2 Drabblet

Gridscape 3 Drabblet

Lines already criss-crossed the space over the chiaroscuro map of shadows far below, but even as they watched, another one pulsed into being; a thick ray of clean, actinic blue, refined energy of the purest grade. The others crouched, preparing, as sails engaged beneath them with distant clunks, and he had to command his own damaged limbs to remain still and locked. His place was no longer amongst them.

“A lot of activity going on down there.”

“And that’s why we’re here,” he murmured. The need for secrecy smoothed the fractured syllables; made them almost normal, almost palatable at these low volumes. The sails were fully deployed by now, and the elegant lines of the freighter began to emerge, accelerating smoothly from its hangar.

“Tron … “

He cut her off with a gesture, could tell where the tentative tone would lead. He had already conceded much in coming this far, but they knew where the line between the improbable and the impossible was drawn. He knew all too well now what the consequences could be for believing in the latter; it was not a mistake he cared to repeat.

“Go,” he rasped, and there was a soft hiss of deploying lines. One was just a fraction of a microcyle slower than the others, but eventually, all four were cutting smoothly through the air.

As the lithe silhouettes unfurled into polished arcs, aimed for the freighter’s hull, he aborted the urge to indulge in a memory of free-fall and turned to limp back toward the city limits. 

grey-sw:

winzler:

grey-sw:

winzler:

Hahahahahaha accidental layout merge = Rinzler!

oooooh, love it. Moody and sinister!

…pretty sure he has an ISO’s head on the end of that pole :3

See? SEE?! I told you! :3

HAHHAHAHAHA OMG I die at you two

Okay, so, the first time I saw this series of drawings was when Winzler showed me this yummy rendition of it, which inspired the following lightning-round drabbling:

This Is Not the Program You Are Looking For

“Rinzler. His Excellency has a new target for you to hunt.”

Freshly returned from an Outlands expedition, the enforcer had yet to even cross the central tower’s threshold, weapons still bared. The silhouette of the head tilted at his peremptory words, and Jarvis could almost imagine the gleam of deep, corrupted orange shining from the depths of shadowed eyes as they turned to regard him.

The scheduler gave a discreet cough and began, “An iso this time - “

“There are no more isos.”

Jarvis paused uncertainly at the soft rumble; had to fight the urge to step back even though the lean silhouette had not moved. Cast into relief by the distant, reflected glow of the tower’s exterior lights high above, the enforcer seemed little more than a flat, faceless icon; a deceptive warning of a danger that was already far too near for it to be of use. “Ah, well, apparently there are. Or, at least, the one. You are to retrieve the iso self-designated as Quorra - “

This time, Jarvis DID step back when the subliminal growl of Clu’s top enforcer hitched, sharpened, became a grinding frisson like the scrape of Outlands code being malloc’ed en masse. The head had tilted down, the enforcer’s weight rocking forward, limbs tensed, and suddenly it didn’t look so much as if the staff and disc were resting at his sides as they were being held free and ready, capable of flashing out in deadly arcs with only a bare nanocycle’s warning …

“Is - is there a problem, Rinzler?” Jarvis stuttered nervously.

And, just like that, the growl dipped into near-silence. “Quorra,” the enforcer echoed hollowly with a single shake of the head, shifting as fluidly upon a heel as the momentary confusion had seemed awkward, striding back out into the dark. “No. No, there is no problem.”

This photo was the result of Winzler’s amazing ArtRage tutorial on drawing gridscapes (see my previous reblogs of one, two, and three). I’m a tactile person and have a closet full of minerals I’ve collected and I can’t tell you how much I just wanna sprawl myself in all those textures and just roll around. It also caused me to belt out a 10 minute speed-blurb this afternoon between conference calls (for reference, I had in the mind the last panel of Tron in the comic Betrayal, where he actually escapes on a cycle):

He shuffled carefully over the uneven surfaces, still hunched, though the worst of his wounds have finally begun to knit. It has almost become a subprocess, now, the slide and ghosting of fingertips across any surface they could reach - not for support, but for the tiny trickles of energy that came with the hair-fine threads embedded in the planes; thin sips that sometimes seemed to only sharpen his appetite, rather than temper it.

He paused upon the lip of his temporary shelter, one hand spreading blindly across the thickest nexus within reach, eyes tracing the contours of land and levels leading toward distant towers. But no matter how much he drank in - the familiar sight of elegant city lines, the meager offerings from a system that has always felt just a little bit foreign - all he could feel within was a gnawing, boundless emptiness.

winzler:

pinkypirate:

Just drawin’ my babies.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww! Aw man! I need fic now.

Fic delivered!

Betrayals

Read on AO3

(Drat it, tumblr should provide a page break thing for reblogs … )

Betrayal.

It was not a concept that Clu had forgotten, or was incapable of applying to his own regime. Quite the contrary. He did not practice self-deception or the nebulous user concept of “optimism”, but faced, unafraid, the cold fact that because he had indulged in such practices before, there was a 1.00 probability that another program would conceive of the same tactic and, with only slightly lesser potential, apply it to the current administration.

He was also not under the misconception that a “perfect system” meant “perfect control”, no matter what his detractors might say. As the system administrator, second only to user accounts (and, even then, one might find that debatable in recent cycles), he understood that efficiency meant insuring all programs played their parts; not bloating the system with overseers for every last variable. When the proper buffers and margins for variability were built in, even errors and outright exceptions could be handled with grace and economy.

But it was true that what parameters he could define were often bracketed by stringent controls - the Grid was Clu’s and Clu left as little to chance as possible when it came to what was his. Opinions and faith and good intentions did not lead to results. The three hundred and sixty-three point two cycles before Flynn’s exile had proven that.

It was being proven yet again this particular microcycle as the angry saw-buzz of an activated battle disc swept past his face, close enough for its sullen orange identifier to be drowned by the actinic white glare of its edge. He flinched only when it found its mark, forcing him to duck from a spray of fragmented voxels.

Betrayal had come in the form of four black guards, marching through ship’s corridors; their masking red idents forged with skill enough to fool fellow sentries, but not Clu’s system-level access.

The buffer had come in the form of Rinzler, who had stalked forward almost before Clu even began tagging the frauds, and the two sentries that had played escort to him activated their pikes, lowering their bright red tips in warning.

The rebels had, with unusual perspicacity, planned their own fallbacks, for while Rinzler was drawn away by the counterfeit black guard, Clu’s first warning that there existed a second stage was one of the sentry’s sudden deresolution.

The other sentry’s specs were admirable enough to save him from an immediate copy of his fellow’s fate. But the first blow had drawn crackling fissures through one half of his torso, and Clu didn’t bother waiting to undock his disc as the program faltered under a second and finally collapsed.

An ISO. Identifiable by the flagrant display of non-utilitarian ornamentation, somehow smuggled aboard and hidden until now. The ISO had ferocity and determination but little real experience, and Clu segregated a full three-percent of his process-time to probing the question of how the algorithm had managed to board at all when his gaze snapped beyond, to a flicker of blue circuits and blond hair -

An orange and white disc flew close enough to splash him with program remains.

A lean, compact form impacted his hard enough to send him sprawling and skidding across the deck.

Something arced through the air, thrown by that briefly glimpsed program, charging with a high-pitched whine that threatened to de-synch his cycle counts while a second white-orange disc rose to meet it -

A good ten feet from the epicenter, Clu still felt the drain; like a grueling microcycle in which tasks come one after the other with no time for proper garbage collection, unrecovered resources dragging at a dwindling pool of processor-cycles. Nearly at its source, the corridor deck and a nearby bulkhead glitched briefly into ghostly wireframes, surfaces rezzing and re-rezzing as they struggled to refresh through the lag, lightrays rendering crazily amidst the flickering geometries. At its center, Rinzler arched back, one arm out-flung as if clawing at the very air for purchase … and there it was again, that shattered electronic howl, the voice of a friend-obstacle-enemy distorted into fractured frequencies.

Clu felt his circuits burn with sudden fury at the memory; at the reminder of how even that first step he had taken toward his given vision of perfection had been flawed, and now it was being challenged yet again by his lack of foresight.

The weapon’s effects were fading even as Clu silently commanded for segregation and resource reallocation, even as he rolled to his knees and barely waited for the flickering floor to solidify before surging forward. Rinzler was falling, helmet vanished into the grid-suit’s base config, circuits flickering madly betwen orange-blue-white-dark. Clu stripped his coat and swept it around the program in a single motion, catching up the limp body before he sensed the incoming missile and wrenched them both aside.

His gaze snapped toward the weapon’s source, a petite blond with hair braided over one shoulder, expression determined as she waited with outstretched hand for her disc’s return. Her ident marked her as a high-level officer, a data traffic administrator, someone who belonged here.

He bared his teeth. “You. You’re responsible for this.”

“And you have a lot more to answer for, Clu - ” she retorted, gaze shifting as she cocked her arm back for another throw … and froze, gasping. “No, it can’t be … “

Clu’s eyes narrowed. With both arms occupied, twenty-three percent of his attention diverted to stabilizing Rinzler’s state, and nearly thirty feet to the corridor’s next junction behind him, his chances of an unscathed retreat were minimal. But the rebel program’s reaction … that was interesting. “Ah. You know him,” he drawled, straightening - letting his burden shift just enough to reveal even more of the bared, lolling head, letting the shielding collar of his coat slip aside.

“He’s - he’s not … what did you - ” The program’s expression twisted as she stumbled forward, fist raised with blazing disc as if she would strike him down directly. “What have you done to him!”

“Oh, c’mon,” he coaxed, pointedly tightening his hold upon the slack form and letting his smile sharpen when the disc lowered incrementally. “Nothing as bad as what you just pulled.”

Visibly shaking, the program stared at him with obvious disgust and horror before she finally dropped her arm. “Don’t you dare attach this to me. Fine, you’ve won this time, but I’m not going to let you keep him for - “

“Halt, Program!”

“‘For’ what?” Clu asked indulgently as she whirled around, disc rising again, but not in time. A scant few nanocycles later, the reinforcements he had called for surrounded them in a menacing circle, and she was forced to her knees before him with a heavy hand upon each shoulder, the active red tip of a pike leveled upon the port on her back.

“Tell me who else you’re working with.”

“Or, what?” she mocked, expression a bitter combination of emotions he couldn’t fully parse, gaze fixed solely upon his burden. “Rectification or the games? Go interface with a nullbit.”

“Language. And from such a … classic like you, no less,” he mused, intrigued in spite of himself as he rifled through her basic properties and realized just how far back her timestamp went. In fact, her creation date …

“We’ve fought programs like you before,” she hissed, gaze finally snapping up to meet his; fierce and uncowed. “And we won. It will only be a matter of time - “

“Time which you don’t have,” he interrupted, abruptly losing interest in the interrogation as the calculations began to align into disturbing patterns, uneasy and restless with Rinzler’s stats still wavering in spite of the temporary expansions he’d made to help shore them. ”Take her to the games.”

“Will you make him face me there?” she snarled as the same hands which had held her down now wrestled her to her feet. “I should have known what he was, your ‘champion’, but I didn’t think even you would stoop to this, to corrupting the - “

“I doubt you’d last long enough to face him, but if that’s what you really wish, that can be arranged,” Clu growled, fingers digging into the shoulder and knee they were curled around, all of his previous irritation rapidly flagged once more by her overt familiarity, by her incessant prattle, by the knowledge she seemed to hold, something he didn’t know, how was that possible …

” - dare you put him in your colors! Yes, I will face him!” the program cried, stance bold, suffused with a confidence that had the sentries shifting warily, their weapons’ collective hum swelling. “I will face him and show them what you’ve done, and one cycle - this one or the next or the next - we’ll bring him back! We’ll bring back Tr- ”

Clu’s boot struck her solidly in the middle and she lurched backwards … releasing only a gasp when the pike behind her pierced the port and emerged from the center of her chest.

He straightened from the side kick, curling his arms and what lay within them possessively close. “It seems it will be a derezzing after all,” he pronounced flatly as she lifted wide eyes from the spreading cracks.

Her lips parted, vocalizer muted; mouth wrapping around a single syllable before the fractures finally chased across her entire form and she slowly slumped to the deck in cascades of bits and bytes.

===========================================================

A power shunt, was all it was; an experimental method of rapid energy drainage that had nearly sapped Rinzler of even the minimal amount necessary for maintaining a standby state. Perhaps, with his special privileges, he had managed to even avert some of its most fatal effects in the picosecond between its activation and the results; Clu himself might have been lucky to fare so well if he had been hit directly.

Feeling strangely bare and exposed after the encounter with the trojan program, Clu had foregone the standard settings and settled Rinzler in his private office to recover after scans had assured him there was no other damage. At least, no other damage than what had already existed.

Clu traced the air just above the pixellated furrow slashing down the right side of Rinzler’s face. Idle processes nudged a related pointer, and he hastily aborted the lookup when he noticed what memory the address led to. Irritated and unsettled, he abruptly turned to head for the exit -

“Clu?”

He froze at the rasped query, whirled around to find eyes barely slitted open - eyes that gleamed the pure blue of an energy spring from the source, the same as the icon at his throat. “Tron?” he croaked.

“User … feel like I got run over by a tank … ‘s the ‘cycle salvageable?” he half-slurred, eyes slipping closed even as a flicker of orange struggled through their depths. “Need t’ tell … vision. Yor- “

“Goto sleep mode,” Clu half-ordered, half-entreated, reaching for his coat - still draped about the loose-limbed frame - and tugging its collar over the dimming blue squares, hiding the sight behind bright gold. When Tron’s head twitched back rebelliously, mouth tensed as if struggling for words, another rogue pointer demanded attention and Clu hesitated only a moment before he curled one hand behind Tron’s head and pressed his lips to the brush of dark hair.

A JPEG. This had occurred in a JPEG, except that he had been skinned in a different attire, the head he had been bowed over had been much smaller, and there were tags of #son #virus #comfort #sleep #bedtime attached to it.

As Tron subsided with a sigh, marred brow smoothing, Clu quoted the caption in a murmur. “Sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

winzler:

umaiunagi:

windgirlcurse:

winzler:

Chat idea: Clu, Rinzler, and Jarvis as mobsters. DO WE REALLY NEED A REASON

[pose lifted from a Rob Lang photo]

This is one my top 5 headcanon on the Tron AU 

 And maybe with Tron as Rinzler’s twin brother who’s a cop/bodyguard or something

Just rambling. :P Meh.

That’s pretty much the idea dw-t came up with, too! A whole healthy and fast-growing plotbunny there. She also added, I quote, “can you imagine mob Rinzler going head to head with Tron and doing Equilibrium’s gun-fu?”

I’LL GET TO THE GUN-FU AT SOME POINT I SWEAR

But in the meantime …

Wherefore My Brother

The beginning of the end came on a chilly October morning, with a skirl of autumn leaves amidst a hail of gunfire.

Alan could vividly recall the sting of road rash upon his palms, the plumes of their breaths twisting in the stiff breeze, goosebumps prickling his arm where his jacket had been pulled askew. The sun was too bright or the air too thin; even squinting from where he had lain sprawled upon the ground, he could only make out a halo of coppery hair, narrowed blue eyes, and a smug, off-centered smirk.

Bradley had stood between him and the man, shoulders bowed forward and his weight balanced over his toes, as if he had a fighting chance against the gun pointed at his center mass. Two more shots had echoed between distant blocks - pop, pop - before all fell to quiet but for the harsh drag of air through Alan’s throat.

“What’s your name, boy?”

Alan wasn’t even aware he had begun moving until there was a warning scrape of a shoe behind him, nudging his near hand. Bradley’s gaze never wavered from the man in the elegantly tailored coat with the gun trained upon his heart, snapping out his gamer’s handle without pause for even a blink. ”Rinzler.”

“And his?”

“Tron.”

The smirk twitched, widened. “Cute.”

Alan burst up from the ground, scraping one palm raw, only to have the breath knocked out of him with a grunt when a hand slapped down on his shoulder and wrenched him back against a chest that felt as broad and solid as a brick wall. ”Brad - !” he croaked, careless with their names, because he was certain that the man was going to shoot his brother for his insolence, that he was going to watch his twin die right before him today -

“Just passing through, were you?”

Even Bradley rocked back in surprise when the gun’s aim lowered, a gloved thumb sliding conspicuously over the safety. “What?”

“I heard him,” the man nodded toward one of the limp, bloodied bodies on a corner. “He was rather hard to ignore, as loud as he was, screaming at you to join the fight. But, somehow, you still managed to do so.”

“We’re not part of them - ” Alan spat.

” - we’re not part of any gang,” Bradley emphasized with a glare at the man and the half-dozen suits now arrayed behind him.

“Is that so.” Alan tensed and Bradley’s shoulders were curling forward again, but the man abruptly smiled, revealing startlingly white teeth. “Well, good for you, man. Finally, some independent thought in this town. It’s been a pleasure, Rinzler, Tron … ” he bade with a negligent wave toward Alan, and he staggered as the bracing grip on his arms abruptly left and his erstwhile captor went to join the others now turning away.

“Wait, that’s … that’s it?” Bradley stuttered.

“What, you want some milk and cookies too?” Bradley automatically bristled, but even as Alan gripped his brother’s arm in warning, the man’s mouth curled into that knowing smirk once more before he turned to follow his men into the shadowed streets. “I’m here to bring order out of chaos, not indulge in silly fantasies of playing king of the hill. There’s potential in this city - I think it’s high time someone created a working system here to let that shine through.”

Alan’s gaze slid toward his brother, but, for once, his twin was not looking back in that perfect synchronicity they had known all their lives. Instead, Bradley’s eyes were fixed upon the dwindling figures, something like wonder upon his face.

One year and two months later, Alan boarded a bus, enlistment papers clutched in one bitter fist and a half-empty backpack in the other. Bradley was not there to see him off.

Four years, eight months later, Alan boarded a train to Quantico, Virginia as soon as his hip allowed, exchanging his uniform and medals for a suit and a badge, his bag no more full than it had been five years and ten months before.

Three years, two months later, a folder was slapped down before him, and when he looked inquiringly up at the sub-director, the man had only nodded, stony-faced, for him to open it.

Alan felt his throat click when he swallowed at what stared back at him from the top page - a knowing smirk from a grainy photo, captioned with, ‘Kevin Flynn, alias Clu’ and a summary of available stats.

“A mob boss halfway across the country?” he asked, hoping that his voice did not sound as thin to his superior’s ears as his own. “What does this have to do with - “

“Keep going.”

Alan could not hide his pause this time before he turned the page, but really, there was no point in trying. There was only one reason why this file would be in his lap now while the sub-director stayed to watch him read through a standard brief that began with Kevin Flynn.

“Agent Alan ‘Tron’ Baines, last name formally changed circa 2005 to mother’s maiden name, from the city which is now harboring said mob boss and now a suspected dealer with terrorists - would you care to explain who ‘Rinzler’ is and your relationship with Clu’s top muscle and hitman?”

Alan couldn’t even swallow this time as he stared back at his brother’s grim, scarred face.

stdeneb:

Tron and Rinzler?  How would this even happen 8D.

Quick 30 min draws are all I can do for the next bit.  I’m back to school and TAing a class this quarter, so back to having no life.  

I had wanted to put something up for this two nights ago, but I think it’s all for the better! Not only am I much more rested, but after doing the two takes format for Oft’s illustration, I decided to try it again since it was so fun. (In fact, Winzler’s helpfully coined the tag 2in1 for me!)

In a Mirror, Darkly

What Might Have Been …

Tron could almost feel something fracturing inside as he stared at the monstrosity standing before him.

His face. His form. But its eyes a dull, flat orange; circuits flushed with the same, fever heat.

“No … how did you … that’s not me, that’s not me, that’s not - “

“No?” The rhetorical question was a smooth purr next to his own hoarse, broken ramblings, and Tron shuddered. The hands upon his arms - all that kept him upright - tightened. “That is you. He is you. Perhaps you’re not even who you think you are - “

No, how could it even be possible, this - this blasphemy? “You can’t … you’re lying … “

“Am I? You were broken, Tron. I’ve fixed you. Bestow your eyes upon perfection … this is what you were meant to be.”

No … no … he could feel the fissures widening, could feel a touch upon his back, someone trying to wedge their way deeper, deeper …

Desperation twisted an arm free, tried to touch that thing’s face, because it must be a forgery, a clever skin. If only he could touch it, he could certify the truth; just a fleeting brush, just a single sampling -

No, another, the next will reveal -

Another -

And another -

“Do you believe me now, Tron?”

But I don’t want to go among mad people.

He hadn’t understood, then. He hadn’t known what it meant, until now.

Oh, you can’t help that.

Something was shattering. A mirror?

We’re all mad here.

===============================================

What Might Be Now …

Oh, Tron. What have you become?

A user’s words, a user’s will, held a power within the Grid like no other. Tron stirred, attention flagged, but just as he would have stepped forward, a hand fell upon his arm.

He turned to see himself, a reflection in coral hues, the chin lowered in warning and a single, sharp shake of the head.

He frowned. “I should go.” This time. This time, he had a good feeling.

The grip tightened, normally dead eyes flaring. Once, he had read threat and danger in them. That had been a long time ago.

“And if not at a user’s call, then when?” he retorted stiffly, back straightening, squaring his shoulders with a surety he had not felt in hundreds of cycles.

The head bowed, hiding the ochre gaze, and he relented enough to turn the face back to him.

“This has gone on long enough. I am ready. It’s time.”

He marked each flop that passed while his other’s grip remained, but as critical as time was, this was just as important. Their symbiosis was a strange and difficult affair, but after this long, it would have been just as bizarre to carry on without agreement as to need an agreement at all.

Finally, a shrug. The hand fell away. Tron nodded, before he turned his back -

“I fight for the users.”

- and pushed the throttle to the stops.

oftaggrivated:

dw-t:

I love your choice of only showing the lower half of Yori’s face, and by contrast, mostly only the upper half of Rinzler’s. They are the most essential components of their emotions - Yori’s surprise, maybe consternation and/or fear also, and the flatness of Rinzler’s expression - and doesn’t distract with anything else.

And the way he has his arms wrapped around her … both intimate and threatening all at once … even the way her near hand is lifted, as if she hadn’t even had time to reach out to something yet, whether it’s for help or to counter his grip … Q.Q <3!

In my head, there was 2 ways to read this- the first obvious one was ‘MINE’- possessiveness from Rinzler over his new toy; the second being that he’s clinging to the only anchor he has left to what he used to be. Which makes for REALLY SAD ANGSTY TIMES.  ;_;

Well. That just gave me all sorts of ideas and feels:

The way of the first …

The grip came so suddenly, she could not suppress a reflexive jump before she froze.

The arm around her middle was too tight to be either comforting or comfortable. She could feel the hot line of his thumb against her throat when she swallowed. His hair brushed her cheek, curling over her ear; she could feel the intermittent warmth of his breath.

“I see. Very well. I do hope you keep him satisfied, Yori. For your sake,” Clu smirked, coat’s edge swirling about his ankles as he turned, sentries falling into step behind him.

Where their red and blue circuits crossed, the reflections merged into lilac. A mockery of what they once had.

=================================

The way of the second …

“Tron.”

And though that sick, scattered rumbling sharpened in warning, Yori did not relent; she refused to give that other aspect of him any quarter, even the acknowledgment of identity.

“It’s all right. I’m here, I’ll always be here for you … “

When his arms finally loosened, she turned within their circle and cupped his damaged face between her hands. “You don’t need to hold on to me so tightly, Tron. After all, I’m holding on to you too.”

(Source: oftohgodwhat, via oftohgodwhat)