disclaimers, canon, translations, and references for 'dreaming electric'
Disclaimers:
• The Avengers movie art book called Tony’s suit-up machines the car wash, which means the term ‘strippers’ probably came from another fic. If anyone recognizes it, please let me know? I don’t remember which one it was.
• Icarus_chained influenced some of my interpretation of JARVIS and Tony’s relationship with their lovely fics dissecting the whole thing. <3
• There are probably other influences I can't remember at the moment, so if there's anything you find questionable, please let me know so I can either explain myself or give credit where credit is due.
Notes on the comic canon used:
• Obviously a fuckload from Willis’ Extremis arc.
• Descriptions of Tony's child abuse came from Iron Man #104-105, #284-288, #300, and #313 (the 90s were not kind to wee!Tony).
• There isn’t a whole lot of backstory for Tiberius Stone, so I took some liberty with it. He and Tony were in high school together and Tony was crowned prom king, but considering MCU!Tony was in MIT by age 16, it’s highly unlikely that would’ve happened in MCU actually totally possible, but it's a minor enough detail that I'm leaving the story as-is.
• There’s far less backstory for Maya Hansen, so I made up most of it.
• Inspiration for a particular scene from the TPB Stark: Disassembled, although the reasons behind specific imagery is different (there’s no Mandarin in this fic, for example).
• Avengers Prime and Tony's time at D&D camp. :D
•Some serious liberty taken with the gold underarmor. I’m pretending that here it’s an extension of the nanotubes in the Extremis, not unlike the Bleeding Edge armor, but with far less awesomeness and very, very thin, like film. And, y’know, not armor at all, just an interface.
Some of the references:
• The Nine Billion Names of God is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke in which a computer program calculates all the possible letter combinations that spell out God’s name, and in the end it’s implied that the universe is either destroyed or reborn as the “stars go out, one by one.”
• ‘Reversing entropy’ is a reference to Asimov’s The Last Question in which humans design an evolving supercomputer meant to determine how to stop entropy, and which Douglas Adams answered with “42.” The ending involves a beautiful scene of creation.
• The Bohr Maker, by Linda Nagata, is a book about stolen nanotechnology and what it means to be human and shit like that.
• Refs that weren't explicitly named (but in some cases are still be obvious): A Christmas Story, an oblique one to Adventure Time, Star Wars, Star Trek, "Video Killed the Radio Star," Lord of the Rings, The Ultimates, Paradise Lost because why not, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Terminator, I, Robot, "I'm So Excited," "An 8-Bit Reenactment of Dungeons and Dragons," Nietzsche, Shrek, The Hunger Games, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, an Internet meme, The Simpsons, Cybill, "God Is the Machine" by Kevin Kelly (Wired magazine), "The Stark Madness of Technology" by George A. Dunn (Iron Man and Philosophy), aaaaand that's all I remember. What strikes me is that someone can think they're all above that pop culture nonsense and then find out that, no, you're actually pretty fucking steeped in it, whether you know it or only figure it out when it keeps slipping out every time a character opens his mouth.
Phrases (and please correct me if I'm wrong):
• Vascere bracis meis = Latin, "eat my shorts" :DDD
• Ya Allah = Persian, "dear God"
• Ölni = Hungarian, "Kill (him)!"