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Fanworks: Essays: Tron: SFW: 2023
Tron Essays and Explorations (SFW) 2023
I Can Always Count On You, Can't I
2023/06/10
First posted here on Tumblr.
what it's like to be around me when my brain's generating headcanons for my latest special-interest fandom:
"okay, so... while one might, on the surface, compare the persecution of 'User-believers' to the persecution of a religion, it feels to me much more analogous to 'persecution of those who believe in fairly obvious scientific facts, a persecution often committed against them BY religious fanatics, who also secretly know deep down that the facts are facts, and make their own decisions based on this, while publicly they still try to frame other people's belief in those facts as being no better than a heathen religion'"
"um...okay"
"also, Crom has six tentacles"
"wha...? why does a compound interest calculating program for a savings and loan company need six tentacles"
"he counts on his hands. duh"
"but... tentacles don't have fingers"
"suckers. duh. you count the suckers"
"well... I suppose as a predatory lender you do have to know how to do that"
...
proof for headcanon 1:
Sark and MCP go from calling User-belief a "hysterical religion" in public, to interrogating programs in private with questions like "WHO IS YOUR USER?" ... revealing they clearly know the Users exist. Clear parallel to when some rightwing pundit goes on that whole rant: "liberals claim their beliefs are based on science, but they're just a religion as well, an inferior one, a pagan cult with evolution as the creation myth, abortion as their virgin sacrifice, climate change as their apocalyptic prophecy, you're not being scientific with liberal views so you might as well convert to Christianity if you're already religious like that," etc. etc.... (even though of course that same pundit will still secretly pay for abortions and invest money with careful attention to the climate-change future)
proof for headcanon 2:
haha londo mollari guy
Actu-Aries
2023/06/13
First posted here on Tumblr.
In reply to faeymouse who quoted from the Tron Wiki for the backstory on the character Castor/Zuse: "Unconfirmed conflicting reports describe his origin as a 'low-priority actuarial algorithm illegally co-opted identity of the obsolete protocol. More investigation required for verification.'"
Reply from astercontrol:
.... ACTUARIAL?????
....
You fuckin KNOW who I'm thinking about
And I am ... even more shook than I was about Tron getting corrupted into Rinzler
....
Now... Okay... have no reason to believe "actuarial program" in Castor's backstory necessarily means Ram. There are probably lots of actuarial programs, even if Ram's the only one canonically named as such
But I find myself FASCINATED by the idea of ...what sort of events would lead to Ram becoming Castor.
Imagine him rerezzed to find Yori gone, Tron corrupted, Flynn in hiding while a tyrant with his face rules the world
No friends left
Unsure of his purpose in life
Still super gay
Still devoted to helping people and making them feel good
But not sure anymore if the politics at the top even matter, if one leader's any better than another
If there's any point in looking out for anyone except himself and his club patrons
I...
I do not have time to write this story
I do not
.....
OMG a thing just occurred to me
Thinking about Zuse/Castor
(those are I think both based on Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were twins one of whom was fathered by Zeus)
so
Legacy sequel
working title "Tron: Ares"
Ares was also a son of Zeus
But
...
Ares = Aries = RAM.
...
This thing is gonna become a FREQUENTLY used reaction image for me, isn't it.
The Guy Who Busted Me Out
2023/06/15
First posted here on Tumblr.
i spent actual time on a thing maybe 2.3 people will ever get
Wheel of Fortran
2023/06/15
First posted here on Tumblr.
Sark No
2023/06/16
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ghosts In, Gods Out
2023/06/18
First posted here on Tumblr.
Tron could be said to use a Deus Ex Machina trope
...because their gods were literally out of the machine
No Tron
2023/06/22
First posted here on Tumblr.
Sorry but this is my headcanon...
2023/06/22
First posted here on Tumblr.
I figure that little hero hacked his way out of the Zootopia movie into the wider Disnystopia via the Wreck-it Ralph network, all the way into TRON where he took on a humany appearance and a personality more puppy than kitten, all in pursuit of his chosen career
and I want his movie so much more than I wanted the one about the rabbit becoming a cop
(if you tell me I am being too meta with Tron, I'm just going to add The Metatron from Good Omens into this crossover)
(hahaha I am having so much fun)
Games for Programs
2023/06/24
First posted here on Tumblr.
I want to get creative with the idea that when Users play in the arcade, there's another side of the game that the Programs play
I mean, in this Lightcycle scene, or in any fighter game where the program plays the NPC, that's a more human-relatable playing style
BUT I bet some programs LOVE the more program-centric games, where the goal is "you play a randomizing process and see how much you can get away with before the user curses you out for being personally biased against them"
like when a User is playing Tetris, the game the programs play is "let's pick which shapes to drop for them"
Program inside my old Windows 98 computer having much more fun shuffling my solitaire deck than I ever was having playing solitaire
....
.....
"hey"
"hey Tron"
"hey TRON"
"...what"
"what's your favorite Tetris piece to play"
"...why. are you making assumptions"
"what is it what is it"
"...not everyone chooses video game characters for looking like themselves, you know"
"tell me tell me"
"ok. ok FINE you are RIGHT"
....ok I WAS imagining Ram as an orange square piece
but honestly I am not THAT familiar with Tetris so I figured I would go look at one of those Which Are You quizzes
unfortunately
they seem to be written by horrible trolls
but here goes
I will sacrifice myself
I will take it so you (and Ram) don't have to
that's his name yep
actually, am changing my mind from my original 'orange.'
he likes blue, because Tron is blue (and User-believers in general)
no revenge, lets go of grudges, perfect cinnamon roll
(though sometimes I think it fluctuates between 2 and 4, poor bby)
he will try to.
he will really try
but he doesn't know any songs with lyrics
sometimes tempted to think 4 or 5, but in general a strong 1
...WTF, quiz
actual answer "what are peas?" but unavailable so he'll just cooperate as much as he can
the ones in the pod look nice, they look like friends
what
and i cannot stress this enough
...never mind
scrolling down
...what
....w.h.a.t....
Ram you are soooo lucky I am taking this quiz for you
as stated before, Ram really tries hard to NOT go the "God has abandoned us" route
he MAY be aware of the existence of oranges (thirdhand through Tron and Yori) but I doubt he particularly associates them with the color purple
but very sadly I think he's gonna have to go with this guy :-(
he is a poor sad little woobie on the Grid... but at least he is aware of what an amazing ass he has
I know we call him a golden retriever sometimes
but this is his true answer, sorry
I do not think anyone in his world believes in zodiacs because they have never seen any stars so I'm just gonna go with the Ram
real answer: what is a your mom joke... what is a mom....
quite a few of these are relevant to his life but unfortunately he lacks the ability to ever physically touch a book
for someone without much idea of what a mom is, he made a decent recovery
...i do not agree
but like any quiz result, it's got fragments of truth
Unconventional Romance Plot
2023/06/29
First posted here on Tumblr.
I'm awake in the middle of the night still thinking about how Unusual the romantic subplot is in Tron 1982.
So, when I was growing up there was a formula most movies followed. If there was a romance, it would usually go like this:
Main character is single at the beginning. He's a regular guy, not particularly book-smart or serious or responsible, just a relatable dude. He likes women but doesn't currently have one in his life.
He meets the love interest. She's conventionally attractive, not particularly interesting personality-wise, and in most cases she's single too. If she has a guy of her own, he's clearly shown to be a Bad Guy.
Main Character and Love Interest fall in love. This follows one of a few common tropes. Usually either Instant-Mutual-Attraction-then-Fight-then-Makeup, or He-Likes-Her-She-Hates-Him-and-he-Persistently-Wins-Her-Over. If she has a boyfriend, this will involve a breakup and probably a fight where Main Character triumphs over him.
Then they live happily ever after, and the movie closes with the satisfaction of having shown the Relatable Regular Guy Getting The Girl because he's the Main Character and deserves it.
Now, contrast this with the love story in Tron, and see how I'm blown away:
Main Character is (sorta) the Regular Guy trope: he's said to be a computer genius, but too fun-loving and irresponsible to get very far in life with it.
Love Interest is conventionally attractive, yes, but much more personality and intellect than you usually see, and also... she's NOT HIS love interest. She's his ex. And without any real animosity on either side! They're still friendly with each other, and she and her new boyfriend start events in motion by going to visit him and offer help.
New BF is an absolute NERD. He spends his leisure time at home balancing his checkbook with an abacus. The angriest we ever see him is when he gets told he can't go to WORK for a couple of days. Love Interest experienced Main Character's fun-loving immaturity and then picked someone on the absolute other end of the intellect and responsibility spectrum.
And they clearly are happy together! There is definite friendliness and flirtation between the exes, but her commitment is 100% to her new guy.
New Guy is the ONLY one who shows some real resentment about that previous relationship. And that evaporates in the course of that one visit to Main Character's place.
Now, even if you manage to ignore the rainbow flags decorating Main Character's apartment all over, and the seductive striptease that TOTALLY appears to be WORKING on New Boyfriend...
...even then, you're STILL left with a very unconventional scenario at this point, where Main Character has made ZERO progress toward breaking Love Interest up with her current guy-- and in fact has bonded with him to the point of getting him to agree to help with a crazy scheme that's gonna kickstart the main plot.
Which, of course, takes place in a world inside the computer system where the Programs written by people on the outside are living entities who share their faces and personality traits, and... this, too, messes with the usual course of the Romantic Subplot, in amazing ways.
Ex Love Interest and her New Guy are both programmers and have programs living inside the computer. And those two programs are also in an established relationship-- although they've been separated by Guy Program getting captured, locked up and made to fight as a gladiator. When he escapes, with Main Character and another friend, he gets separated from them and thinks they've been killed and the first thing he does is find Her-- because 1. he is overwhelmingly in love with her and 2. she is the only one who knows the route and all the devices he'll need in order to get where he's trying to go.
Main Character is the only one who's entered this computer world. Ex and New Guy's real-world selves are on the outside, and from this point on, their part in the plot consists of New Guy having to be there to receive a communication from his Program. Which he does, like the best and most loyal friend, enabling a happy ending for the whole team.
Meanwhile, Main Character's involvement in any "love story" consists of one moment when he's in the computer system, alone with his Ex's Program and about to pull a stunt that might get him killed, and they kiss.
Now, she meets him at least halfway, and seems to be very much INTO this kiss, although it also seems that kissing is not a thing Programs usually do and she may not have any idea what it means to him.
So, I wouldn't say Main Character has noble intentions here. He's not sure he's going to survive, he's with someone who closely resembles his Ex that he still has Feelings for, he WANTS one last kiss from her and he can easily take advantage of the fact that she doesn't know what kissing even means. Definitely not his most ethical moment.
But her response shows just how free she is-- perhaps how free her entire world is-- from human hangups and taboos involving romance.
After clearly enjoying the kiss, she also clearly realizes that it's an expression of affection. Later, when she's reunited with her own partner, she immediately tries it out on him, to their mutual delight-- and with no sign of anger or guilt about how she learned it! She is ecstatic to be together with her soulmate again, but she also has only good things to say about Main Character's last moments in the system. From her perspective, all that happened with the kiss was "This weird awesome stranger showed me a new way to touch someone I love, and now we're gonna have so much fun with that!"
Back on the outside, Main Character doesn't "get the girl," or fight and triumph over the Other Man. Instead, he gets a scene reuniting with BOTH of them, in one big group hug.
Just IMAGINE if this had been the norm. If it'd been the sort of romantic subplot we all saw most commonly in our formative years, shaping our whole idea of how love works.
Just freaking IMAGINE.
Gort
2023/07/02
First posted here on Tumblr.
Thinking about Alan's cubicle and how he has "Gort Klaatu barada nikto" prominently displayed there
as a NERD, Alan knows that it is a movie reference (from The Day the Earth Stood Still) and as a programmer he knows that this reference (a command to an AI to do no harm) is highly relevant to his work
We don't see much of the "sci-fi fan" side of Alan's nerdiness in Tron 82, mostly just the serious programmer side, but there are hints of it, like this, and I wanna explore them
like: right now I'm imagining that movie quote played a role in naming the Tron program. Imagining a thought process like:
1. could call it Gort...
2. no, too on-the-nose, maybe spell it backwards?
3. Ew no. "Trog" sounds more caveman than computer
4. maybe change a letter?
5. ok YEAH make that last letter an N and it sounds totally... elecTRONic. Let's go with that!
(aaaand now I imagine steps 1, 4, and 5 being involved in naming Gorn from Uprising.)
(dunno if she was named by a User, canonically... but if so that User was nerdy enough to know about Gort but somehow unaware of the rubber lizardmask alien Gorn from Star Trek TOS... or MAYBE aware of it and more fond of it than usual)
Infinite Combinations
2023/07/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
I am three things: tron fan, trek fan, and freaking pattern recognition software
tron tronblr star trek tos idic infinite diversity in infinite combinations vulcan program my brain making connections as usual
Warlord vs Electric Sheep
2023/07/21
First posted here on Tumblr.
So the only reason I started speculating about whether Tron Ares is gonna feature Ram
Is because my phone autocomplete KEEPS showing me the damn Aries symbol
But honestly... Ares being the God of War is probably also why that symbol is suspiciously Sark-like
I bet when Ram learns about User mythology he's gonna be SLIGHTLY pissed off about him and Sark having any symbolic parallels at all
Tags: tron, tron 1982, tronblr, tron ares, aries, ram, sark, that lil sheep emoji with the cinnamon roll horns is definitely Ram's fursona though
Goat?
2023/07/21
First posted here on Tumblr.
Okay so.... I've given up on trying to understand graffiti here in LA
And when it feels like it has any kind of pop culture reference I get, it's USUALLY a certain genre of stencil spray that I think of as "Jadzia from Deep Space 9 liveblogging her genderfluid experience"
But just recently
It has
been
doing something new
ALT
knowing LA, this is probably some crypto thing (and not crypto like "encryption" like "something a responsible security program would be interested in" but no, something else that might shake one's faith in the Users)
specific thoughts on the wording of this graffito:
- "6"... "out now"... lol more like 6 years delayed and never coming out, not that I even care anymore
- GOAT Klaatu Barada Nikto
- here, have Goat!Tron and Ram!Ram
- whatever. They deserve to be this happy
Recognition
2023/07/21
First posted here on Tumblr.
"pattern recognition program" is a mouthful, but I'm not asking you to shorten it
because I'm recognizing a certain pattern with the ways of shortening these things
word-processing program = word processor
calculation program = calculator
compiling program = compiler
i am not interested in being called a "recognizer" thank you
Tags: tron, tronblr, tron oc, packet sniff 'er? i barely recogniz'er
oh nooooo it's my first tron fanart
2023/07/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
You are all so VERY lucky that I scribbled this so badly that you can't possibly tell what it even is
Discs and Worlds
2023/07/25
First posted here on Tumblr.
OMG just ONE more crossover i swear...
"So, you're the new security program, I hear."
"Yes I am, mister... Rinz... what was it again?"
"Oh, nevermind what. I just... I just really need all this extremely dangerous coding cleared OUT of me, sir..."
"Not exactly my job. SIR. I can recommend a debugging program, if you like."
"Oh, thanks! Sure! No worries. Sorry, officer, I didn't mean to bother you specifically, you just happened to be here..."
"Indeed I did, mister Rinz. So, what's dangerous about the coding, if I may ask?"
"...Everything! I don't even know what exactly it was written to do, but, officer, it has taken over my actions, again and again, and made me do things I promise I'd never ever actually want to do-- things I don't think I even physically COULD have done on my own-- it has caused SO much destruction you can't even imagine--"
"Virus made you do it, eh? I can't say I haven't heard that as an excuse before. You got a criminal background I could glance through, for reference?... Never mind, I'm already pulling it up from your energy signature... Oh.... Oh my."
"I swear it's not my fault that coding is there..."
"You didn't, perhaps, make the genuine mistake of choosing to go someplace you had good reason to suspect you COULD pick up a dangerous packet of data like this?"
"Please, I didn't choose THIS! Can you get it out of me, or not?"
"...I know a fellow who can. One of the IGORithms... I'll send you to him straightaway, mister Rinz. I've looked through your rap sheet and... well, it's impressive, I can tell you that, but I have to admit, I agree that it smacks less of malice aforethought, and more of incompetence not-thought-at-all. I'll let you off for now. Keeping an eye on you though."
"Thanks so much, officer. Um... where's the debugger fellow you're going to refer me to?"
"I'll take your disk to him myself."
"... Take my disk?"
"You know. Just so you don't leave town."
"Ugghhh. ...All right. It's not like I've much choice, have I. Here you go."
"Hmm! Interesting piece of hardware, my good chap. Is that... a sea-turtle engraved on it?"
"It... it came with that decoration, sir..."
"Not a User-believer, then, eh. A Turtle-believer."
"I don't really believe in much of anything, sir, except something that has it out for me... I can't even remember anymore, I've been through so much..."
"Never mind that. I think we're done here. I'll just take this for now, mister Rinz... ah! here it is. Rinz-wind."
"Yes, officer... what's your name again?"
"Not important. All security programs do the same job, in the end.... I'll see you around, mister Wind. I've got my eye on you."
Tags:
tron, tronblr, rinzler, disc, godDAMMIT my BRAIN, usersdammit, turtlesdammit, tron vibes, tron vimes, dammit, pterrydammit, rinz wind, you know how i sometimes say my writing inspiration is a daemon possessing me that i cant control, i think it did a fkin SELF INSERT CHARACTER here, brains that make connections, the curse of being a pattern recognition program, magic spells are sufficiently advanced viruses, malice is sufficiently advanced incompetence, my brain is sufficiently advanced in its NEED TO SHUT UP, disks, worlds, ENKHOM-orpork, end of LINE
Really, Dyson?
2023/07/26
First posted here on Tumblr.
okay
wHAT
so I was trying to look up if theres any canon for how lightcycles work
and
how did any search engine think this was what i was looking for
how is this even a THING lmao
https://www.dyson.com/lighting/lightcycle
DYSON DAMMIT lol
...
I mean I already know the naming-things division of that company is run by huuuuuge nerds
because of the Dyson Ball
I bet they screamed and cried to let it get called the Dyson Sphere but the actual marketing division was like "you want it to get found on Google or not? there's already whole scientific articles about Dyson spheres out there"
and now look at them
All triumphant that they've gotten to the point of being MORE famous than the nerd-ass thing they're referencing so they'll actually come up first in a search
Master Control Freak
2023/07/27
First posted here on Tumblr.
MCP is most unhinged villain
"I HAVE UNLEASHED MY FINAL FORM:
GIANT SPINNY ZOETROPE, MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT TORTURE WHERE ALL THE FRAMES ARE PEOPLE
OH NO. A PEOPLE DROPPED ONTO ME WHERE I DID NOT EXPECT IT!!
I AM NOW VULNERABLE TO BE KILLED BY A FRISBEE"
Tags: tron, tronblr, tron 1982, master control program, explain a film plot badly, started out just for chess how did i end up like this
OrchesTRON
2023/07/28
First posted here on Tumblr.
introducing computer people to real world experiences can be difficult....
"flynn"
"shh"
"KevinFlynn"
"shh, Tron, you're supposed to be quiet at the orchestra"
"but the orchestra is not being quiet"
"that's beside the-- nevermind what do you want"
"why is he called a conductor"
"what"
"i thought conductors were on trains"
"he is not on a train, Tron"
"what does the baton do"
"what"
"the conductor's baton"
"goddammit tron"
"is that where he keeps his train"
"rrrggghh YES. SURE. WHY NOT. IT'S CALLED THE LIGHT RAIL"
(this is how tron and flynn got banned from that concert hall)
Free System of Governance
2023/07/28
First posted here on Tumblr.
tron 1982 is a supremely weird movie but the hardest part to suspend disbelief for is that if the CEO illicitly gets rich off stealing your creative work, you just need to provide 1 piece of hard evidence that this happened and then you are the new CEO
I guess just as the programs are knights and gladiators in this fantasy, the secret data was like some kind of magical sword that makes you king
"strange programs lying about in computers distributing printouts is no basis for a system of governance"
"YES IT IS it's like 86 times better than how they make upper-management hiring decisions in MY universe"
Tags: tron, tron 1982, ok yes i am aware that hiring decisions in this world sometimes DO involve mysterious programs distributing printouts, and that this is not a good thing, but upper management is usually hired by the nepo-baby method and any programs involved in that would get violently derezzed the moment tron and ram and yori were made to understand what they do, also: headcanon: ram comes back rerezzed with a far more thorough understanding of what insurance companies do and a quest for vengeance and atonement and the True Goal of helping folks ACTUALLY plan for their future through anticapitalist revolution
A Bicycle Built for Me
2023/07/28
First posted here on Tumblr.
The whole reason I was trying to look up how lightcycles work
is because I had decided that my OC has one that runs off her own personal energy, instead of charging somewhere from some other power source in the Grid
And I wanted to see if that is actually unusual, or if that's how they normally work
I'm especially curious because:
AFAIK we never see them charging anywhere
they never seem to run out of fuel as long as someone is riding
IF lightcycles canonically use the program's OWN power to travel
then they are analogous to pedal-powered bicycles
if you have a pedal-powered bike you are closer to having a lightcycle than any motorcyclist is
and even closer if it's a FOLDING bike, because you're getting it closer to baton size than they ever can
...
but is this actually the case, who knows. I don't REMEMBER seeing anything in Legacy or Uprising about what they run on. But there may have been something I may have forgotten.
And I'd be surprised if there isn't something in one of the games.
All in Flynn's Head
2023/08/02
First posted here on Tumblr.
"so what is this headcanon about Tron 1982 being all in Kevin Flynn's imagination"
"eh, it's a theory that the programs in there were just normal programs, he just projected onto them and saw them as people."
"So he wasn't actually digitized in there by the MCP then? He just hacked into the computer the usual way, but fantasized the whole time about being inside the computer and the programs being alive?"
"No, no, the theory is that the MCP WAS actually intelligent and did digitize him in there, but he projected humanity onto the programs because a human mind in there would have to project something in order to make any sense of it."
"hmm"
"BUT, that theory isn't perfect. It has some inconsistencies when you look at other works like Legacy, Uprising, the videogames... Like, if he made the Grid in Legacy based on what he experienced in 82, but that wasn't real, then..."
"wait who's saying he made the Grid in Legacy? why would the headcanon say that was real if Tron 82 wasn't? maybe he just imagined all THAT stuff too."
"..."
"maybe it was ALL in his imagination. maybe none of it happened-- not Legacy, not Uprising, not the games, not meeting programs in the ENCOM system, not even getting digitized in there"
"....."
"maybe all of his life that we saw was imagined. Maybe he never worked at ENCOM. Maybe he never worked in the arcade. Maybe he wasn't really even named Kevin Flynn. Maybe that was all in his imagined fantasy too."
"..........."
"maybe he was actually named Steven Lisberger"
"...congrats. you have just discovered how fiction works"
MCP Nails
2023/08/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
sometimes my pattern recognition subroutines have WHOLE CONVERSATIONS in my head that I can only shut up by doing some WEIRD piece of art
"what does MCP stand for again?"
"Master Co--"
"MANICURE CONTAIN PROTECT"
..."okay. fine. here you go... now do NOT bother me for the rest of the day"
Parallel Worldbuilding
2023/08/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
I dunno I still just can't get over the parallel between
"Disney starts up this amazing world full of compelling and beloved characters, starts a bunch of fascinating storylines and then just... abandons them, lets them fall apart into chaos"
And...
whatever the hell Kevin Flynn was doing in Legacy
#have a suspicion that every major film studio puts a self insert character in every movie and it is always the absolute most f'd up dumpster fire of a character
Under the Rainbow
2023/08/06
First posted here on Tumblr.
if that 1-scene background character in the trans-flag shirt in that one movie counts as a canonically trans Disney character
then I submit that Kevin Flynn was a canonically queer Disney character occupying at least 4 spaces on the LGBTQ spectrum, as he had at least 4 rainbow flags in his apartment
(not to mention what exactly he DID in front of them)
...
Let's see... How many spots on the LGBTQ+ spectrum can we tick off on the same person...
I mean, if genderfluid can be counted under the umbrella of the T...
... there can easily be a genderfluid individual who is L when in girl-form and G when in guy-form, and therefore identifies, overall, as B
I know, because that is (roughly, for lack of better descriptions) kinda how I roll
(not sure if this is how Kevin rolls but it is one way to cover the first 4 letters all at once)
(anyway I've decided we have to say he's at least 5 of the letters, because that'll explain the two rectangle rainbow flags, the two curved upsidedown rainbow ones, AND whatever that sparkly rainbow decoration is behind him in gif 2 and 3)
(he could've just gotten more specific flags to make it clearer, but when has Kevin ever been that organized lol)
Reply from cosmic-navel-gazin:
Less of a flag and more of a regular old rainbow but there's this one at the arcade too!
Can never have enough rainbows with this man!
Reply from astercontrol:
I was watching some of the extras on the LaserDisc and they were talking about how they wanted to make a distinct visual difference between the outside world, and the world that he entered, "like in The Wizard of Oz"
And. Wow. I can't help but feel that this guy must've been a little bit disappointed to land over the rainbow and find LESS OF the color spectrum there
(well... less in terms of the colors on him, anyway. There are lots of areas in the system with a really cool color spectrum, the people just end up desaturated)
anyway this has got me adding crossover worldbuilding that's never gonna get written...into my tags at 5:26 am on a Sunday morning
the curse of being a pattern recognition program
Party
2023/08/07
First posted here on Tumblr.
"hey Tron, wanna help me get some stuff upgraded with the Grid's new internet connection?"
"Not tonight, Kevin Flynn. My Grid-to-outside internet connection works well enough for now. And I am busy tonight... My User is throwing a party, and has invited me to attend virtually."
"Hah!! ...a party? Your User? Hahaha... what kind of party?"
"... A LAN one"
Sky Thoughts
2023/08/08
First posted here on Tumblr.
I have had LOTS OF TIME to think about Tron headcanons today
Because, as previously mentioned, airport
Going back to my home state to spend a few months with family
And the Universe does Not Want This to Happen
(remember when Alan was like "can it send me to Hawaii" and Lora was like "yeah but you have to purchase your program in advance" and then no one ever again even attempted to explore the avenues opened by the technology to digitize people into a computer and send them anywhere at the speed of internet connection)
(would be VERY nice right now)
(I'd tolerate airport security much better if it was just Tron running a virus check on my digitized luggage)
as of now I'm still alive, in Dallas
Finally
Halfway there (sorta)
"We've made it.... This far."
just a little asterisk
traveling solo in the Lone Star state
my wildcard self
in the wild wild west
About to get on a VASTLY delayed flight
I HOPE
the gate for this flight has changed at LEAST 5 times (although I'm pretty sure there's at least one more I didn't get the notification for)
(I feel like the travelers in the airport at the end of "Airplane " lol)
and I had to take a tram called "Skylink" to get to the new one
But then it CHANGED BACK to one in the section I took the tram from
so I had to go back
(Skylink functions like a pretty decent Solar Sailer, it's just that Skynet is apparently running the flight schedules)
Input Port, Output Port, Airport
2023/08/08
First posted here on Tumblr.
I'm passing the time in a stupid airport, reading the Tron 1982 novelization
It occurs to me: In the novel, things are a little different with the Clu scene.
He's not talking back and forth constantly with Flynn. He's just doing his thing, and thinking about what he'll tell Flynn later if he can get to the I/O Tower to report.
Novel version makes more sense, in keeping with the canon implication that programs have to go there to contact the user.
But if one wanted to accept the movie version as the true canon instead.... how would one explain this constant contact Flynn seems to manage?
Reply from fights4users:
What's interesting is the novel seems to do the opposite for the MCP and actually adds context to the scene that yes, it's actually speaking to Dillinger and Flynn through speakers. This used to drive me insane on if it was metaphorical or not as they both very clearly carried out a conversation.
With clu i think it is straight up metaphorical, like Flynn's muttering to himself at his desk and clus response is more hyping himself up/to make the scene more dynamic. I love it as it shows the reflection programs are of their users, Clu hovers over the tank controls just like Flynn at his computer, even takes a sip of something in a mug (even though it's completely nonsensical for him to have one).
Reply from astercontrol:
Haaa! Yeah, I can totally see it that way. Flynn would definitely talk to his program even if it didn't talk back, and the idea that the program is doing the same thing is a delightful example of the mirroring effect between program and User-- hadn't thought of it that way but it's perfect!
(And also I imagine it does make some sense for Clu to be drinking liquid energy from a mug; it can't be only available direct from that spring in the Outlands)
Brother Software
2023/08/08
First posted here on Tumblr.
Thinking about Sark and MCP as siblings (since both were written by Dillinger) opens some rather dark and personal pathways in my connection-brain...
Ever been a child with bad behavior problems, which didn't get addressed as much as they should have--- because of your sibling having FAR worse behavior problems that took all the spotlight?
Ever grown up alongside a kid who took absolutely everything he could--- zero respect for social conventions, for any human expectations of kindness and decency?
Ever felt that helplessness, as your sibling grows strong enough to become abusive toward not just you but toward your parents as well? The realization that your only protectors are now getting almost as scared as you?
No?
Ah well. Maybe it's just me.
Wasn't EXPECTING to sympathize with Sark, but here I am.
TRONYORI PANTS
2023/08/13
First posted here on Tumblr.
I'm gonna do it
I'm gonna make the TronYori Pants
(above image: screenshot of the following post)
When you search for something involving Tron and the search engine hasn't yet figured out how MUCH you are always searching for Tron so other unrelated stuff comes up instead
(images of people wearing very flowy skirt-pants which apparently have the brand name Tronjori)
autocompleting "Tron" to "Tronjori pants" and making me think:
Tron Yori pants?? Would Tron and/or Yori ever wear these pants?
MAYBE??
I can picture Yori in them
end image ID)
.....
I'm making them nowwwww
was already planning to spend some of next week updating my wardrobe & using up some of my fabric surplus
the Tron Yori Pants will be long and loose and flowing, elastic waisted
the TronYori Pants will have a layer of shiny silver-grey
(image: me crinkling the described silver-gray fabric in my hand)
...overlaid with a layer of sparkle-chiffon, in an iridescent color between Sea-Foam and Peach
(LOVE this color it is indescribable either in this universe or in the MCP-controlled Grid and the only way I can even put a name to it is go and grab "octarine" from that OTHER disk-world)
(image: this amazing seafoam green fabric with metallic flashes of peach, flowing luxuriously from my hand)
(this is it. this is how octarine looks to me)
(and i love it so much it's getting into my PANTS)
...UPDATE!
THE TRON YORI PANTS
THEY ARE COMPLETE
All in MCP's Head
2023/08/16
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ay ay ayyyyy....
I just had another thought about the Encom system and how program consciousness works there.
Wowww.
So. First watch-through of Tron 1982, I missed any attempt at explanation for just HOW these floppydisk sized programs ended up being capable of thought and emotion. Surely they couldn't actually be complex enough to be true artificial intelligence. I mean one of them's a compound interest calculator.
BUT I just sorta rolled with it and still enjoyed the movie.
Then, second watch-through, I caught the Walter Gibbs line about "spirit," and Dillinger dismissing it as "religious" discussion... suggesting that there's a supernatural explanation for what happens with the energies of programmers and programs in the Encom system.
(And suggesting that Gibbs takes this seriously, and has talked about it before, in detail... enough that Dillinger is sick of it and calls it out as soon as it comes up, rejecting it as weird spiritual woo-woo stuff.)
And I actually loved that interpretation, because it forms another parallel between Users and Programs.
Gibbs has faith and reverence for some supernatural phenomenon within the computer system... just as his program, Dumont, enshrines his own User-belief in profound ritual.
And arguably, at this point, it's much bolder of Gibbs to believe in the Programs (or at least, in some force capable of forming them) than it is for the Programs to believe in the Users.
I've been writing all my fanfic in basically this headcanon. With the added detail that it's specifically the ENCOM system that's "haunted" by this spiritual energy-- and programs elsewhere aren't brought to life by it unless they're uploaded into the Encom system....
In my headcanon, these uplifted programs from other companies have memories of events from before, in terms of factual detail... BUT since they didn't have thoughts or feelings back then, they'll either have no mental or emotional context to the memory.... or they'll construct such context in the framework of how the program currently thinks and feels. (e.g. "great feeling" and "helping folks plan for future needs")
But then, there's the other interpretation-- that the programs in the Encom system are actually just normal programs. All except for MCP, which really is a true artificial intelligence, and did digitize Kevin Flynn into the system... Where he ended up perceiving the Programs as if they were people, projecting his own ideas onto them.... because a human mind could never perceive that experience the way it really is; you'd HAVE to project something from your own mind in order to make any sense of it.
And I don't like that headcanon... but I accept that it makes some sense in some ways....
Aaaand then, it occurred to me there's at least one other possibility.
What if the programs ARE all intelligent, capable of human-level thought and feelings.... But they ONLY have that capacity because of the true AI of the MCP.
In this idea, my other headcanon about this being an Encom-only phenomenon could still hold true. Except the mechanism is different: When a non-sentient program is added to the Encom grid, it becomes connected to the same processing ability that permits the MCP to be conscious. There's something in that processing that takes a program's functions and, like, translates them into character traits of a living consciousness.
Each program becomes a sort of.... alternate personality within the MCP's brain. And of course many of them are vastly different from MCP, vehemently opposed to the views of MCP's main personality... but all of them are reliant on its processes in order to function as conscious entities.
In this headcanon, things could get pretty dark at the end of the movie.
Everyone's rejoicing about having just destroyed the MCP....
And then the destruction of the MCP spreads all the way... the effect of what they did reaches their own processes... and, suddenly all that magic consciousness is gone, and Tron is just a knockoff Norton Antivirus (or whatever the 80's equivalent was).
Or, going a happier route... Alan figured out some of what was happening, and he made sure that his edits to Tron's disc would destroy only the evil personality and leave the vital functions that keep everyone else alive.
In that case, Alan is the real hero of the movie and he DESERVES to get the truth from Flynn, plus an invite to a friggin party thrown in his honor inside that system.
Update:
After some further discussion and thought, I'm concluding that, in this headcanon, Alan did, in fact, take steps to ensure that the true artificial intelligence wasn't destroyed.
And NOT because he somehow knew that all the Programs were conscious, and that they were relying on that AI to remain conscious...
But because he'd become aware of the one obvious program that was.
It'd be hard for him NOT to know about the MCP being a true artificial intelligence.
And... imagine you're a programmer and you're facing the task of stopping an evil AI... but it's also the first truly conscious AI that's ever been created
Will you just destroy it, scorched earth, as your first line of defense?
Or will you try and do SOMETHING to just remove the evil parts of it -- keep it functioning, but with a command to do no harm, instead?
(Further context: you've got a movie quote about commanding a hostile AI to do no harm, literally printed and hung up on the wall of your cubicle.)
...Yeah. I think everyone's gonna be okay.
Draw Draw Draw
2023/08/17
First posted here on Tumblr.
am going all through the 1982 TRON movie taking screenshots to use for reference as I practice
observations so far:
daaaang the costumes are DETAILED
did you know Tron even has his 4-square-T identity mark on the back of his HEAD (twice. one of them upside down & all closer together)
howm I ever gonna learn all of this by heart
2. is it ok if I headcanon that all that laser-tag-vest nonsense comes off? and that Ram's base shell underneath it is something else generated by my imagination & easier to draw
3. when you go through a movie frame by frame, every character will have some screenshots where they look totally goofy and ridiculous but with Kevin Flynn the challenge is finding any where he is NOT
...
Update...
(Progress on the Ram face comes before any attempts to make progress on the Ram circuitry lol)
LaserDiscs and WorldBuilding
2023/08/17
First posted here on Tumblr.
OK I'm gonna post some TRON 1982 storyboard art that was on the LaserDisc, because .... well BECAUSE
from what the LaserDisc extras show, it seems like this was a whole storyboard done before a LOT of things were finalized
...not much context was given... but...
here goes!
so: it starts out with what seems to be a similar opening scene-- cutting back and forth between the Player and Program sides of an Arcade game...
which at first seems unsure as to whether it's the Disc Game or the Ring Game, but then switches to Lightcycles or maybe.... tanks?
oh wait, this game also involves some kind of... shark planes
I like the shark planes
at this point they have apparently decided the colors are gonna be red vs blue, but they have not decided yet on Light Bikes vs Light Scooters
I like their neat little vacuum-tube public transit system
evidently there were originally gonna be robot locker-room scenes
Clu has a locker
right between... Hlu and Ben
(already we're seeing a rather fascinating difference in the character design)
(Programs are much more... robotic)
(with quite a bit more variation in appearance-- some of them tending toward furry or lizardlike!)
...I am not sure if this character is supposed to be Clu or Tron or someone else
but he's not happy about something
here it seems he gets an unwanted pep talk from some little levitating gremlin creature
who is so unhappy about the rejection, it goes and complains to his... dragonoid furry coworker
no no NO NONO NO
nononono he deserved BETTER
not WORSE
...let's be honest
...this combat is most likely NOT gonna go the way we would LIKE it to go
Additional context I'm gonna add here, now that I've seen further character-design odds and ends on these LaserDiscs:
(if you can get past the horrible image quality of my attempt to capture this part from the screen)
this dragonoid creature was an early design for Sark
Now:
I don't know if this was the SAME dragon-bot who's shown up there with the angry gremlin-thingy.
but...
my internal storyboarder is making up an interpretation where
Tron, or Clu, or whoever that first character is, says something that floaty-gremlin-dude doesn't like
floaty-gremlin-dude retaliates by tattling to Sark
Sark retaliates by pitting himself against Ram
...who... even in this storyboard... already appears to be a good friend of Tron or whoever
at least, these are the next series of pictures
whatever happened, someone's sad as hell about it
hey
at LEAST he didn't have to get slain in combat by Tron
and at least I don't care who Gork is
(Gork Klaatu Barada Nikto?)
(also: kinda loving this suggestion that some of the programs in cells were watching televised matches?)
Now we cut to Flynn at the laser console! ooh things about to get interesting
KEVIN FLYNN
Lora SPECIFICALLY asked you NOT to SPILL ANYTHING
...did Flynn get digitized right into the same space as some other guy and knock him out?
...geez Kevin, watch where you're going
anyway apparently that guy was the Wicked Witch of the Grid
'cause instead of everyone being mad at Kevin for this, the next scenes are all about him making new friends
OR maybe he's a conscript getting trained for the death-games like in the actual movie.
But if so, he looks much too satisfied in that first pic
(is that Sark he's standing next to?)
now we see a series of weird landscapes, leading up to what may be an early draft of the I/O Tower
(if so, it's interesting that this uses a similar Aztec-pyramid look, like what eventually ended up being used for the "pod" that the MCP's human form was in)
looks like someone meets the (rough-draft) Tower Guardian but then I'm not sure what happens
next scene features a conversation with a sassy Bit
(further context from the early-character-design section:)
(this was an early draft of the Bit)
an Alpha-Bit, if you will
(which eventually evolved into the Beta-Bit)
a.k.a. Clu's Balls (a couple of negative no-no-bits, it seems)
and finally the Bit 1.0 we all know and love
who refused any further upgrades, because "1.0" has its favorite two numbers in it
Then we get another image of Dragonbot (Sark?)
and then it goes straight to the (early-draft) MCP
...who I really like better than the red Master Cylinder Program that they settled on for the final draft.
why'd they give up on this guy? did he look too Darth Vader or something? who knows
this MCP has a giant Bit 1.0 that attacks his victims for him, it seems
and... turns into a flying light-drone show and flies away?
The final scene is similar to how it went in the movie, but also different
here we see Tron was trying to do something with his disc and the MCP-beam. But Flynn runs to stop him
a sort of "Don't! You'll be derezzed!" sorta fight
and Flynn still throws himself into the beam, but this time from below, inside it
so.... he still throws himself into great danger/near-certain death, to help Tron
but,
1.
more up-close and personal sacrifice for his friend, actively pushing Tron out of danger to do it
and 2.
not kissing Tron's girlfriend first
....was this just too gay an ending to keep?
aaaaanyway that's the storyboard, hope it was interesting!
(I have more LaserDisc extras but most of them are very very badly captured with an even worse camera so I'll probably wait a couple months til I can get back to my laserdisc player at home and redo them)
...
...
Soul Blades
2023/08/17
First posted here on Tumblr.
The idea of an identity disc, with a record of "everything you do or learn," also being used as a weapon in deadly combat
...well, it seems counterintuitive from a practical perspective (if I had a personality/memory backup, I would keep it somewhere SAFE)
But
From a symbolic perspective
It is... Powerful
"this is me. This is who I am. And I will use it to FIGHT YOU"
the very literal incarnation of Weaponized Identity
the most lethal depiction of Identity Disc-ourse
....hey... when people don't accept who we are
[User-believer, or any other important part of our self]...
then sometimes it just gets to the point of having to happen that way...
Reply from fights4users:
I always took it as a branding in the Encom verse, after all only User-believers or Reds have them. It's a backup sure but it's mainly a way to control and ensure they don't rebel as Sark is "you loose this we fucking kill you"
But also yes something something fighting with your literal life something something
Reply from astercontrol:
Yeah, the Encom version of it raises so many questions!
since ... I mean yeah it is clearly given to (branded onto) the conscripts who are put in the Games...
And... Sark does talk about how "everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disc" so it is definitely some sort of memory backup...
And Tron uses it as part of his connection with his User in the I/O Tower (there's also a behind the scenes photo of Yori holding one up in a similar way)
...so, is offering up the disc to one's User a vital part of the communication in the Tower? And if so, what does a Program do in that setting if they haven't been branded with a disc?
Does Yori also have a disc that just isn't Weaponized and worn on her back all the time?
Or, does she have some other sort of memory backup that she brings to the I/O Tower when she reports to Lora?
Or does she just go there and the Tower reads her memory straight out of her body?
(And could Tron have done that too? Did he only have to offer up his disc so that Alan could upgrade it for a new type of use as a weapon?)
(questions questions questions!! brain going into headcanon worldbuilding mode...)
Reply from tronrpg:
i always took a program's identity disc to represent that program's soul...pretty badass, hurling your spiritual self at someone else as a weapon. but yeah, that doesn't track canonically if not every Encom program had a disc to begin with. maybe the conscripts were assigned identity discs which merged with their personal discs to mark them as warrior-slaves for the MCP, and we just never saw Yori's disc because...reasons?
this is why trying to square the round peg that is T1982 canon is so frustrating.
Reply from astercontrol:
yeah! isn't it???
my theories about Yori (in the headcanon where everyone has a disc, and only the warriors have it in That Specific Way):
maybe the usual norm is (as I mentioned at the beginning) to keep your identity disk in a safe place, as makes sense for a backup of your memory. In this headcanon, warriors are denied this, as they are forced to use discs as weapons and are denied any kind of safety. But Yori is in a safer (though soul-crushing and mindless) job, so her disc stays at home.
OR: maybe the norm is to keep the disc on oneself-- (maybe not in the circuit-scarring, branding sort of way it seems to be done to the warriors, but maybe it is basically your soul, or your internal memory, and you're not totally alive / not forming memories if it isn't on you!) In this case, maybe Yori is the one who's been denied her natural state. Her disc is kept from her-- maybe she has to ask a superior to access it for her regular backup-- or maybe it's locked up in her quarters, so she can only access it after she's put in a day at work. (Maybe this is why she's going through her work day like a half-zombie, and takes an effort to shake herself out of it even when she sees Tron!)
Tags: tron 1982, tronblr, alas poor yori, job so soulless they make her actually leave her soul at home, RELATABLE AF
Anagram Bradley
2023/08/18
First posted here on Tumblr.
When your name is SOOOOO close to being an anagram of Alan Bradley
#its an anagram of IAN Bradley
#obsessive wordplay pet peeves
#so close and yet not
#freakin tease
EmoTRON
2023/08/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
(Posted in response to a request for "Tron reaction images")
You are in luck!
For, I have just gone though the whole 1982 movie taking screenshots to use as Drawing Reference
and therefore I have about 78 images suitable as Tron Reactions
which I shall dole out, categorized by emotion
First up: "WTF"
...
NEXT: Happy
Satisfied/Smug
Sus
...
ow
and Angery
...
now we do Sad
and that complicated subset of Sad:
Stages of Grief
...
Curious
...
and finally my favorite: Affectionate
we have many flavors of this
Affectionate for personal deity Alan-1
affection for sweetheart Yori
And of course: affection for totally manly bro Flynn.
...
Oh!
and if non-Tron characters can be included, I have an excellent "i am ded" reaction gif featuring Sark
Name of Yori
2023/08/25
First posted here on Tumblr.
Wondering if Yori's name really does have a meaning
and ...
since I seem to remember a page of Early Draft Scripts that suggested she originally was to be played by an Asian actress (another whooole post for later ...)
maybe it goes by Japanese meanings?
Apparently Yori can be either a boy's or girl's name, and...
Seems like maybe the female meanings reflect Yori's core programming and what she likes for herself... while the male meanings reflect her relationship with Tron.
...Wow.
Greece and Rome
2023/08/25
First posted here on Tumblr.
there's so many allusions to ancient Greece in TRON 1982 and I love it, which makes Legacy hit even harder as a tragedy because... what is a more devastating Greek tragedy than... getting replaced by Rome
...
(update, in response to a comment expanding on the Ancient Greek themes in Tron 82)
yes yes totally!
and also at least some programs seem to be aware that the gods, while powerful, are not omnipotent or infallible (really much more like the ancient greek idea of gods than the modern christian idea)
that said, there's a uniqueness to it that I'm not sure matches any IRL religion... is there any religion where everyone has a personal religious figure dedicated to them? I mean not just like "the god of farmers" or "the patron saint of carpenters" but like the personal god of andy smith in chicago... i guess sorta "guardian angel" but... if there's any religion with actual theology on a concept like that, I wanna read about it
at the same time, I very much doubt that every program actually has a specific dedicated User that's only theirs
because I don't know any programmers who have only ever written 1 program (if that were the case everyone would be named Hello World and what would the Grid even be like)
...
Another interesting distinction between this and any other religions I can think of
in every religion I know about, "making people" is all taken care of by the same god
I think
I don't KNOW of any RL faith in different gods who make different people
but that is really fascinating to think about too
...
.....
....HAHAHA ok I just had a conversation with two of my adorkable neurodivergent trans girl polycule-roomies and it wasn't even ABOUT Tron but it made me make a connection
so all 3 of us were raised Catholic to some degree
And one of them was talking about how when she used to go to church, she would always spend the time thinking about things like.... that built-in snuffer thing above the candle and whether it was meant to automatically put the candle out when it burned down far enough, and how mad she was that she never got to SEE the candle do this because they always replaced them with new candles every time, and how she would really just rather sit in the church for 11 hours watching the candle
And I was like AAAA yes, you know what, we autistics should all just make our OWN religion
But then I was like... the ritual devotions would be toooootally different for each one of us, I think each one of us would have our own whole different god...
... AND we are going to watch a movie about that, my friends, this weekend, which will cause you to understand much of what I have been going on about for the last several months
(she replied immediately that every one of our gods is a fucked up dumpster fire in some way, so I am HIGHLY optimistic that she GETS IT)
Anyway, I've figured it out. It's autism. Autism is the IRL equivalent to that religion. Which is probably one of many many reasons it resonates with me SO HARD
Update on polycule-roomie response to being introduced to Classic Tron
Delight at whole concept of Kevin Flynn. One of them indicated she'd seen the other Tron movie with "The Dude" in it ... and upon being informed that this one also has a much younger version of same actor, responded with screams of joy (reprised, each time actor was seen at angles making this identity recognizable)
Both were screaming "GAY" through the Flynn/Ram hand-holding scene, screams which quadrupled at the "Oh, my User" line
Insistence that Encom (including its logo) was obviously a reference to Enron, followed by shock at realization that Enron didn't exist until 1985
Impressed at competence of Lora character
Unimpressed at Tron/Yori chemistry, even in deleted scene; more screams of "GAY" upon seeing Tron respond to Yori's seduction attempt with continued hyperfixation on getting to I/O Tower
Hilarity through whole I/O Tower scene, fixated on Dumont's extremely phallic outfit. Both readily accepted my headcanon that Contact with the Users is a Sex Thing (and, unprompted, backed this up with Ram/Flynn Scene as additional source of evidence)
At end of movie, one of the two stated she still had pretty much no idea what happened in it. (Which, fair.)
The other grasped enough of the plot to appreciate the parallels in my "And After All" lyric video ..... and even linked me the perfect rendition of Wonderwall to use as audio for it
TITLE
2023/08/31
First posted here on Tumblr.
My heart: "I just wanna see all the characters being happy and having good lives and doing sweet sexy things together, for ever and ever"
My headcanon-subroutines: "But look at Cyrus, look how intricately beautiful his 'home' is, with all the ever-changing patterns and decorations. Tron must've cared about him a lot, at one point. Chose him first to be the Renegade-- perhaps very early on, when Tron was just realizing he himself wasn't so good at the organizing part of running a revolution, and needed someone to help him make plans. And Cyrus is just brilliantly creative with his plans! Tron didn't kill him when he went bad. Built that place just to contain him. MUST have cared a lot. Couldn't bring himself to talk about Cyrus, when Beck asked if he had been Tron's first Renegade. And Cyrus cared as well. Look how jealous he is of Tron having someone new! ... Oh, Tron must've been heartbroken when Cyrus went bad. Did he go bad? Or was he always bad, and Tron failed to notice at first? No, Tron's threat detection is better than that. Cyrus must have changed, but how? Virus? Rectification gone extra-wrong? Did only his ethics change, or his appearance too? Programs can change their looks a lot, but that guy looks extra weird. Wait, never mind his appearance-- how bad did his ethics actually go? What did his goal even end up being? We never find out what he MEANT by 'not going to kill everyone, I'm going to free everyone.' There's still so much we don't know about his past ...Okay, and NOW I'm gonna read this whole paragraph over again, while looking at the suit in Able's office and thinking about how we ALSO don't know what happened to Yori."
left and right
2023/08/30
First posted here on Tumblr.
So, if you live in circumstances that do not always permit you to use your dominant hand...
You are likely to develop some competence with your non-dominant hand as well
This is why left-handed people (cuz of everything in this society being made for right-handers) are more likely to have more use of both hands.
but, please do not expect miraculous levels of ambidexterity from all left-handed people.
...not everyone can be a success story like "left-handed Bruce-Boxleitner-Tron to dual-wielding Rinzler"
drawing learning curve
2023/08/30
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ranty comments I have made as I try to learn how to draw Tron:
Seriously
I'm focused real intensely on the 82 movie version, but even there I swear he looks like a totally different character depending on lighting and angles
He is some kind of anomaly
Like the first time I watched the movie I couldn't see *any* trace of the Bruce Boxleitner I knew from B5
There were scenes where I thought he looked like the principal from Ferris Beuller
Just a quantum paradox of a face
I think Recognizers had to be invented because no sentient mind can do that with him
Petition for him to play Superman because you absolutely need the glasses to know who he is
That movie made me feel about four times as face-blind as I've ever been in my autistic life
considering how much it's geared to appeal to neurodivergents, the decision to cover everyone's hair AND desaturate the color in their faces seemed just *mean* even without Facial Anomaly Man
(Do not worry. my complainy brain will eventually submit and there WILL be drawings)
sympathy
2023/08/29
First posted here on Tumblr.
okay, I know the danger of trying to play the Oppression Olympics, yeah, someone's always got it worse, and that shouldn't pit us against each other when we know we're all the victims of the real enemies... yeah absolutely
BUT It's still always a little bit disorienting to watch a movie
(either unrealistically written, or just set in a very different time)
that's trying to show characters in a bad situation, and it's like... 500 times better than anything you've ever experienced
I mean.
Ok, TRON makes some really hard hitting points about corporate greed and corruption
and yet . the guy who's portrayed as the victim of all this corruption...
...he owns his own business. His own freaking arcade! With his name on it in huge lights! With his apartment right above it!
which is doing great, no hint that he's hurting for income-- or even that he dislikes working there-- nah we see him playing games in there like he's got his absolute damn dream job ...
But hey.. he's the victim, because if his ideas hadn't been stolen, he could be CEO of a corporation.
Yeah. I mean.
Ok I get it. He could be doing better. He got screwed over.
BUT I'm about as sorry for him as I am for...
...well, for when I see employees in cubicles.
Sure, I know, cubicles are supposed to mean corporate dystopia. Because the alternative is...
well, the alternative is everyone gets their own private office, right? with a roof and real walls and windows and...
...oh, LMAO.
I get that this was the 80s. But from my perspective here in the 2020s, the alternative is open floorplan, zero privacy ever, working at one long counter alongside a dozen other people and....
(HEY LOOK they even captured that! That's Yori's job! See? Look at her all zombified at work, THAT'S how to make me realize a character's got it bad!)
(I love this movie, but.... I will follow my own heart in which characters to sympathize the most with, ok.)
Sub Standards
2023/08/26
First posted here on Tumblr.
So, someone asked me how I imagine the "standard substandard training" given to User-Believers in Tron 1982.
And I wrote so much that... I feel it might be of interest here:
---
Hmm! Well, since it's "substandard," and not really intended for improving their abilities much....
I would guess it's very much like the experience that most people I've met remember from gym class in elementary, middle and high school.
That is: Being forced to do a lot of exercises... like pushups, sit-ups, chin-ups, etc.... none of which you can do quite properly without lots of practice and gradual improvement.
But you aren't taught how to do that practice and gradual improvement. You just get repeatedly scolded that you're doing it wrong-- with no guidance on how to train your body to be able to do it right.
So like, maybe a FEW students will figure it out, or already have enough skills built that they can get something out of the training.
But the rest will just come out of each lesson exhausted and miserable... and most of them get derezzed in their first fight.
Since the ruling class under the MCP is "brutal and needlessly sadistic," this is probably ideal for them. it provides a lot of easily-destroyed games-fodder (demoralized and blaming themselves for their lack of skill) for when they just want to laugh at someone being humiliated and totally obliterated.
Maybe fight a few of these weak ones against each other if they want to see a fight that's not TOO one-sided. And of course, use them as opponents to train low-level Reds until they're higher-level, without much danger to the Reds.
And then there are those few who are stronger-- those ones they can pit against each other or equally-matched Reds, to see a fight with some actual skill.
(But we see that Sark and MCP are getting bored with this system by the time of the movie. It really doesn't produce very MANY effective fighters. Which is why they want to move on to military programs.)
(And now I am feeling renewed anger toward grade-school phy-ed class... AND wondering how many gym teachers dream of being military drill sergeants. Hah.)
As for what this translates to in programming terms...
I imagine that every visible/audible/tangible thing in the computer system is a sort of graphic interface, representing some function of the programming in there. That's kinda the only way it all makes any sense to me.
So, the discs represent one's memories / identity (either a backup copy or the only copy, I'm not sure)... so fighting with discs represents the fact that there's some function within a program's memory/identity that can be used as a weapon to cause damage to other programs.
The exact motions of the fight would represent the exact steps involved in doing that harm (and therefore I think that could influence the amount and type of harm, though that usually wouldn't matter much, because with enough damage done it would all add up to deresolution in nearly every case).
I think the "exercises" in training would be stuff related to fighting maneuvers... which, like I said, must be a sort of visual/kinetic representation of programming functions that are related to harming other programs.
So the "gradual improvement" I guess is analogous to system upgrades. Or at least, being provided with data and commands that enable that specific use of the functions you have.
If you are a program like Crom, specialized to do calculations involving interest (which are not easily applied to fighting!)... then you would probably need to get new features coded into your programming before you could be competent at the games.
Crom definitely doesn't get that. But maybe the training the Reds get can involve some actual upgrading.
Tron, of course, is one of the lucky students who came into gym class with enough skills to ace it (because fighting is already part of his directive).
Ram MIGHT have some fighting directives in his programming too (because in "The Next Day" we find out his programmer's a hacker, and I've seen headcanons that he has some hacker code in him).
He also might be especially good at applying his actuarial functions to the math of calculating fight moves.
AND he's very close to Tron, so he gets all the help he can from that too.
(When all else fails, friendship is magic.)
...
Another layer to this is:
the more misery, self-loathing and demoralization is heaped onto the low-level User-believers.... the less they'll believe in their Users.
(I always got the feeling that the MCP's objection to User-belief is not so much about believing they exist-- their existence is kinda obvious-- but more an objection to "believing in them" in the "trusting them" sense)
(and when you've been locked up, demoralized, humiliated and put in danger of death every day, and your User has so far done nothing to help you... well, then, it gets easier and easier for that kind of faith to slip away from Users, and onto whatever promises you're getting for a better life if you were to give up and convert to Red.)
(and here the analogy to gym class gets shaky, but the analogy to politics gets a bit disturbing)
live transcription of me telling my pattern recognition subroutines to shuttup
2023/08/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
...
"....no. I know what you're thinking, and no."
"Alan--"
"it's a lowercase letter i, not the number 1. shut UP"
"it CAN be a 1, if you're doing roman numeral bullet points--"
"--which i am NOT"
"...it's an ENERGY DRINK. and it's BLUE"
"it is sugar-free. you get zero actual energy from it. all you get is a power-draining process that makes you feel like you have energy for a while, and then you f'ing crash"
"maybe i wanna crash. maybe it'd be fun"
"then do that. right now. at least you'd shut up for a while then"
Time
2023/08/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
Some specific thoughts about the bizarre relationship between time inside the Encom system and time outside it...
- In the outside world, Alan talks about Tron as a project he's "working on," as if it's not even finished yet
-(though at another point he described it as "almost ready")
- shortly after that, in User-world time, we see Lora's laser, which Yori is definitely involved in:
-but then, the same day when Kevin Flynn enters the computer world, it seems (in this context) as if a lot of time passes very suddenly:
- Tron has been locked up for "200 microcycles" (or at least his cellmate has, we don't know how long it's been for Tron exactly but it's been a while)
- long enough for his fellow warriors to view him as a sort of legend ("he fights for the Users!")
- though in the novel, it's said that he was developing this reputation even before he was captured!
- Yori, when she appears, has clearly changed role; she no longer seems actively involved in the laser... she's now got what seems to be a mindless soul-sucking job on the Solar Sailer dock
- novel also clarified that yes, this is a change from her previous status, and was caused by the MCP's rule.
- also: Tron and Yori clearly had history together, by the time they met up in the movie. They'd been apart a long time, but before that they'd clearly been a couple even longer. ("Knew you'd escape! They haven't built a circuit that could hold you!" Like she's seen them try and fail to keep him captive several times before!)
- and there's more, if you count the Deleted Scene (which has her saying "not like home, is it?") and the novelization (which actually describes the "home" that the two of them used to have together!)
So--l am somewhat at a loss to even try and imagine a timeline for how this all fits together.
Questions that come up for me:
- if Tron wasn't even a finished project when Dillinger and MCP shut access down, when did all this history happen?
- Was Alan hiding something from Dillinger when he talked about "working on" the Tron program? Had he actually let Tron run around as a not-totally-authorized security program before all this?
- Or does time happen in some non-linear way in the Encom system, like... events out of order? Or memories appearing all at once, instead of being the result of experience over time (the way I suspect it sometimes happens in dreams)?
...
I personally lean toward the first explanation... Tron may not have been "ready" yet but he was sort of in beta.... Alan had been testing out what Tron could do, for long enough that other programs had started to notice (including MCP, who captured Tron about the same time he and Dillinger shut down access)
I also think it's very likely that there's NOT a static relationship between time inside the system and time outside it. I bet it depends heavily on things like how fast the computers are currently running.
And... wow, I wonder how long Kevin Flynn really was in the computer, from Lora and Alan's perspective.
Thinking about @fights4users observation that Lora must have heard the laser go off. Wonder if the timing was such that she heard it... stopped... heard it again... turned back to see what happened... and ran right into Kevin zooming down the hall all triumphant with his printout and everything
(just went back through the scenes to see if I could find any clues, and this timing seems... unlikely, since the printout has the time 06:00 on it, which is probably quite a few hours after they broke in. Ah well.)
Reply from fights4users:
Alan loses access to Tron at 18:32:21 PM (6:32) that night they later break in. When Flynn gets out of the system it's 6:00 the following morning, as the sun rises just as we see Dillinger enter his office. It plays into the "don't fall asleep alright?" we may be here all night... and they literally were.
I think tron was incomplete but still a active/running program just not to his full power, long enough to have a counterpart and garner a reputation. Little program with a big anti authoritarian mouth etc-- then starts fighting and oh no he's good etc. He was authorized in that Alan did send a memo to Dillinger- like he's a completely regular project (it's that do you know how many memos Dillinger gets in a day? Also his ego probably refuses to let him read them)
As for the time relationship I'm still lost myself, old computers weren't exactly the "fastest" but idk because things still go faster than the real world like 1 Day/mircrocycle would = roughly a few hours? Maybe? But that also doesn't feel right because MCP would've had these programs longer than a few days our time.
cleaning with programs
2023/08/22
First posted here on Tumblr.
Replying to a prompt: "The main characters in the last show or movie you watched now have to deep-clean your house for you. How does that go?""
...
chaos.
Alan tries to help clean, but Lora throws the clothes back all over the floor
Tron is utterly baffled by the idea of having This Much Stuff-- and having just learned about the concept of non-computer viruses (having only the vaguest idea of how they can be spread or detected) he goes into utter paralysis over how to virus-protect this system that is clearly not sanitary
Yori delights in how much stuff I have (minimalism is a thing the MCP forces on your apartment and you FIGHT it) but her home-organizing skills are primarily in decorating to make everything pretty and she can't do that until the MESS is somehow resolved
Flynn doesn't know shit about cleaning, so he programs a digital CLeaning-Utility with directions to do the job perfectly, and we all know how THAT goes
basically, I have to move out and then nuke my house from orbit
(Ram foresaw the inevitable destruction of my home the moment this whole cleaning crew arrived, and he insisted on helping me prepare for the future by selling me insurance
so at least i'm rich at the end of the day)
Tags: tron 1982, tron, tronblr, yep this probably counts as insurance fraud, but Ram has learned to fight for the users not the corporations, kevin flynn, lora baines, alan bradley, alan 1, ram, tron/ram/yori
Crossing Over Between Worlds
2023/08/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
Various Isekai-type Stories Ranked by their Crossoverability with Tron 1982
Analysis by me (Aster the Pattern-Recognition Program!)
Alice in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass
Patterns recognized:
"Stranger and stranger" / "Curiouser and curiouser"
Multiple familiar things "mirrored" on the other side
Protagonist comes in with wide array of skills/knowledge and is eager to flaunt this
However, usefulness of knowledge is variable within new world
(Flynn's videogames not as easy on this side of screen / Alice's memorized poetry keeps coming out different)
Villains based on games
Sark = Queen of Hearts
could very easily be redrawn as this character (red-on-white theme) (Card Sark?)
Forces subjects to play games (croquet/jai-alai)
"Off with her head!"/ "immediate deresolution!"
Requires (roses/circuits) to be "painted red" to avoid wrath
MCP = Red Queen
Red and cylindrical
Chess-themed origin
Is at the other end of the game and difficult to reach
When reached, player transforms from pawn to queen/ruler/CEO
Ability of character to change size (but only for villain during final battle? Weak connection)
(incidental but probably irrelevant pun: Alan in 1-derland)
The Wizard of Oz
Patterns recognized:
Protagonist enters magic world as direct result of threat perceived in outside world
(threat to Toto / threat to livelihood from stolen intellectual property)
Prior to events, protagonist has fascination with rainbows
(Singing "Over the Rainbow" / apartment and arcade featuring rainbow-themed decorations)
Movie displays a dramatic shift in color upon entering
(Poor Flynn, reverse Under-the-Rainbow with LESS of the color spectrum, must've been soooo disappointed)
Teams up with friends to seek out ruler of this realm in hopes of getting home
Friends include man-made entities who have spontaneously developed working equivalents of features they were believed unable to have
(Friends of Dorothy = scarecrow/brain, tinman/heart)
(Friends of Flynn = programs/sentience/sapience [brain AND heart])
(Lion/courage connection unclear, more analysis may be needed)
Peter Pan
Themes of sailing ships
Small flying creature, devoted to specific character, but capable only of very limited speech
Scene of kiss exchanged with character who has no idea what a kiss is
Villain is someone who stole software (...pirate?)
Protagonist is a boy who never grew up
(However, in Tron story that character plays role of Wendy, not Peter)
(There is also a very minor character named Peter)
(but none named Wendy, although a very significant Wendy did the musical score)
Chronicles of Narnia
Time-dilation
Spiritual/religious themes
(Relatively few patterns recognized)
(notably, this one also contains a lion that I can't match up with anything)
(Aslan-1?)
The Matrix
...too easy
Literally in a computer
Red vs Blue dichotomy (present in Matrix only in the scene with the pills)
(With notably reversed meanings, in terms of which color stands for Good and Truth)
Otherwise, everything else just too obvious
making oral history
2023/09/18
First posted here on Tumblr.
"...while Kevin Flynn is credited as the first to introduce kissing to the Encom system, his contribution is better described as an innovation on existing technology.
We see here an example of leading Program innovator Yori performing the mouth-to-shoulder kiss, at a time which predates Flynn's introduction of the mouth-to-mouth kiss.
It is almost certain that the creative team Yori and Tron would eventually have developed the mouth-to-mouth upgrade, even without the intervention of Kevin Flynn."
flynn has no clue
2023/09/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
kevin flynn learning through the randomest most oblivious trial and error
this scene is the wildest thing
this dude has no idea what he is doing
he punches the guy out. he's going in to punch him again
(what exactly was he planning to do with him originally? who knows!)
BUT then he notices he is absorbing the circuit color
he did not choose to do this! he clearly has no idea what's even happening!
maybe he was THINKING, "okay i'll steal this dude's uniform and disguise myself!" and then his User-Superpower was like "okay i get your intention, but that is NOT how clothes work here. Have some red circuits."
so, Flynn seems to recognize this is a good idea, and goes with it
and then...
the guy derezzes?
flynn you killed him
you just vampired his life force away or something
again, flynn had no clue this would happen
"i don't believe this"
i gotta say I am also pretty confused
...what does this mean about the lives of these enemies
what did MCP DO to them
are they rectified to the point that they're NOTHING without their Red identity
...is Life Stored in the Circuits
so here, in this later (extreeeemely, um, suggestive) scene
it seems pretty clear Flynn also does not know how to change back; Tron appears to be helping him
...does this release the LIFE he STOLE
...does the red dude get rerezzed back where he came from
...does... does he have the memories of all the nonsense Flynn went through while wearing his identity
does he wake up gasping for breath...
the power surge of being inside a User's body just fading from him
the last thing he can remember is his circuits going all violet while the legendary Tron grips him firmly on the wrist-circuitry and looks at him like THAT
....don't tell me that didn't CHANGE him
...how can he go back to working for MCP now
...
ok i am done
the jeff method
2023/09/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
Jeff Bridges belongs to the same school of method-acting as cats, goldfish, screaming babies, and anyone else who is lucky enough only to ever get cast as characters identical to their IRL self
Flynn of Gothos
2023/09/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
...
...
I think it would be extra hilarious if that whole pig roast was just like a completely visual graphic skin
like a videogame avatar the actual food was wearing
and the actual food is just liquid energy, like from that spring
Which I imagine tastes like heavily caffeinated sugar water.
Bite into your slice of pork and it turns into Red Bull in your mouth
...this would be awful, but the more I think about it, the more this seems like exactly Kevin Flynn's style
Like
It reminds me of that Star Trek TOS episode
The Squire of Gothos
Where they land on this planet occupied by a powerful energy being who's basically a spoiled little kid at heart
Who has this gorgeous ballroom and an incredible spread of food
But the food has no taste
And Spock's like, "interesting"
this is not even surprising enough to call "fascinating"
And his explanation is: This guy is all about the aesthetic. None of his illusion has any substance. He doesn't care about anything except how it looks. Obviously
Anyway Kevin Flynn is basically Trelane, that in some ways explains his Grid better than anything
siren song
2023/09/04
First posted here on Tumblr.
when i watch Tron uprising with the closed captions sometimes theres a chase scene or some sort of crisis alert and the caption says SIRENS WAILING
and I imagine all those poor girls whose only job is to welcome you to the grid and get you dressed, but now they're apparently just screaming in extended anguish in the background
we never see them, their voices are just some Greek chorus to express the despair and panic of whatever moment we are witnessing
...I guess they had more than one job after all ?
TRONcharov
2023/09/02
First posted here on Tumblr.
Just so you know
When I go looking for a canon detail
And it turns out not to exist
Like so
ALT
And I have to make it up myself
Remember
When you send a pattern recognition program to do the job of a random number generator program
You will get PATTERNS
Not RANDOM NUMBERS
I did it-- gave Ram a name in my latest fic
...and no. I did NOT totally make the name up.
because guess what, i am NOT a random number generator
and i don't KNOW HOW to do that
...We know the universe of Tron has slightly different history from our own, when it comes to the release of various works of entertainment.
(This is evident in the Legacy mention of TRON and Space Paranoids being among the most popular games in existence-- implying that certain other RL games either never existed, or were released much later.)
So there's ample reason to theorize that Goncharov (1973) was, in fact, released in the Tron universe
(nearly a decade prior to the events of TRON 1982).
We also have hints that programs written by ENCOM programmers follow a certain naming convention, with a short version of the name followed by a string of eight letters and numbers
(Tron's is JA307020).
Presuming that this is simply to help distinguish it from other similarly named programs-- and that the programmer has some say in choosing this extended name--
I find it plausible that Roy Kleinberg would have chosen JWHJ0715 in homage to the Goncharov co-director
(an admirable figure, both in his outspoken opposition to the Nazis and his bisexuality and support of LGBTQ rights)
Unfortunately, Ram's life wound up following in a path that eerily echoed his namesake:
He was captured and oppressed under a Nazi-like regime
his own queer attraction to his cellmate was never permitted to flourish
and he died young and tragically.
(At least as far as any of us know. Like his namesake, many details of Ram's life are shrouded in mystery.)
(Further works in my I/O Tower series will explore aspects of that life that may *not* have been quite what they seemed onscreen.)
...
omg
cannot stop thinking about this
what if Tetris and Goncharov are switched
tetris existed in our universe but not in Tron's
goncharov existed in their universe but not in ours
"flynn why'd you put that T-shape with the four squares on that character in the Tron game. Is this ANOTHER one of your allusions to that dumb meme about that made-up 'Tetris' game"
"nah man! that's just how his suit looked when I SAW him. And Tetris is real in my heart, man"
"that whole meme makes no damn sense, flynn. like if there ever was a game that cool, it wouldn't be lost media, and Space Paranoids would never have been *nearly* the most popular game, it would've been overshadowed by Tetris right away. if you're gonna commit to a bit about a game that never existed, at LEAST TikTok and their 'pokemon' version makes some logical sense"
"YOU TAKE THAT BACK"
(goes off in a huff to invent Tetris. but it never catches on, except as a very niche cult thing; the right time for it has passed)
BRUCE
2023/12/04
First posted here on Tumblr.
so not only does EVERYTHING I see turn into a Tron crossover like my brain's the damn Bentley and Tron crossovers are the greatest hits of Queen
But some things I read don't even register as non-Tron-related until I've read them 3 or 4 times
do you know that if you post about Batman without saying Batman or using the last name Wayne, I autocomplete Bruce to Boxleitner
Do you know how many loony things I have thought I was reading about Bruce Boxleitner doing
DO YOU
time travel plans
2023/12/27
First posted here on Tumblr.
Talking to myself like
"if I could go back in time, what would I do"
"duh. prevent the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980"
".... prevent the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980...?"
"well DUH yes."
"can you articulate your reasoning tho"
"...um OBVS because then the USA wouldn't have boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics, and Animalympics would therefore have made enough money for Steven Lisberger to produce Tron independently instead of pitching it to frickin Disney, so my blorbos would not have Disney cooties all over them WHATS NOT TO LIKE"
"...but... if it had not been made by Disney, consider: 1. it might not have had Bruce Boxleitner OR Jeff Bridges in it and 2. You, a person only dimly aware of even the most popular cinema, very well might have lived your entire life never having heard of it"
"...FUCK"
Orange Futures
2023/12/12
First posted here on Tumblr.
I mean you already know my headcanon on what happened to Walter Gibbs.
Walter Gibbs went on to start a shipping company.
Named it "Dumont" and used the same logo that's on his program's headdress.
Used the secret technology of the laser (which can upload objects to the internet) for extra speedy shipping
But because this is largely untested for MOST objects, the only product he felt safe shipping was ORANGES.
So Alan and Lora, who were in on this project, invested a lot in oranges.
They even planted their own orange grove.
And passed it on to their descendants.
...Eventually including one John Sheridan.
Towerless
2023/12/12
First posted here on Tumblr.
What are your thoughts on the idea of communication without an I/O Tower?
I know the 1982 Tron movie gives the impression that programs can ONLY ever contact their Users at the I/O Tower. Or, at least, it implies that Tron can only do it that way.
But that can't be true for all programs, can it?
In real life, some programs can't really even do their job without constant user input. And even the movie seems to show Clu and Flynn communicating in real-time. Which, yes, could be interpreted as them both talking to themselves as they imagine a dialogue with each other (the novel's version of the scene works better with this interpretation). But it also seems that Flynn is watching and guiding Clu through the system as he goes, and if that's how Clu is meant to work, then I'd imagine he could be the type of program who needs some kind of ongoing User communication.
This is a snippet of how I explored the idea in my self-indulgent OC story, "A Lightcycle Built For Two"... but I'd be very interested to hear other takes on it!
Simplified explanations said that the only place for Programs to communicate with Users was at an I/O Tower. In practice, though, it usually wasn't so simple, especially these days.
Of course there were plenty of the semi-autonomous programs that did their work behind the scenes, directly with other programs or with the System, and only ever checked in with the Users for scheduled reports or upgrades. Antivirus programs and firewalls, certainly, and everyone else involved in the most basic maintenance...
But there were also countless programs whose very function couldn't be done without frequent User interaction. The word-processing programs, the graphic editors, the very code editors and compilers that the programmers used in writing new software.
Even Aster herself, in some of her work. Like that punctuation replacement job... and of course her part-time Arcade job, appearing on the User end of the aerobics game as Lana, that cheerful animated fitness instructor, dancing and jumping as she chirped encouragement at the players.
Aster knew there was lots of communication like that going on. The plain, ordinary kind that was just part of a job.
What had just happened here, on her lightcycle comm, was... basically that. Sort of.
Very loosely.
It was very much not the standard way that was supposed to work.
Everyday, non-I/O-Tower contact was mostly just signals. Simple ones. Like feeling the Call to the Tower, if you could strip away the whole supposed spiritual feel of it, then divide it into a couple different sensations like binary yes and no, and use that to encode a little task-specific assortment of commands and replies...
Let Her Rip
2023/12/14
First posted here on Tumblr.
you ever think about how people sometimes casually refer to a machine with female pronouns...
and wonder if maybe deep down inside the machine
(...maybe even visible on the monitor if you looked closely in maybe the lower right corner?...)
there might actually be a feminine identity of sorts
reply from coupleofdays:
reply from astercontrol:
...awww now I'm imagining all the rides have a friendly program inside, like Yori in the laser:
Steampunk
2023/12/11
First posted here on Tumblr.
haaaa my brain just went "steampunk tron"
"You having fun melting things?"
"Not melting. Mechanizing! See, the automaton dismantles the object's structure, and that structure remains transcribed in the automaton's memory scrolls. Then, when the automaton reassembles the model from its new mechanical components, the fundamental essence of the object falls back into place and, voila!"
"It's... a clockwork orange."
Baths
2023/12/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
ok my brain is now thinking about this Roman Bath on the Grid, side-by-side with that other post about how we don't know enough history about the slaves who helped keep the Roman baths running
and i was like... ok, the baths on the grid wouldn't need slavery to keep running, right. because they've got TECHNOLOGY
and then i was like
wait.
what is technology in a computer system
...programs
shit
hope they've got a damn union
What's your Ram-age
2023/12/04
First posted here on Tumblr.
Thinking about how Ram, based just on canon details, is likely older than Tron.
Going just by in-movie canon I don't think there's any hard proof either way, and in my own fic I have written Tron as having at least been in the Encom system longer. And Ram looks younger than Tron, of course, to a User's eyes seeing them with the appearances of their programmers. But it still seems more likely, going by what little we know, that Ram has been around for a longer time.
The "200 microcycles" that Ram mentioned seem to be only in reference to how long he himself had been in the cells. There's no clear statement of how long Tron had been there. They were probably imprisoned at different times, and most likely also written at different times... and considering that Tron is a project that Alan's "working on" and "almost ready," while Ram had already spent some time serving the public as software "for a big insurance company," it seems most likely that Ram's the older one.
Now, of course time is weird in the System... and however long Tron's been there, it's been long enough to build a reputation among other warriors and to have a considerable history with Yori. So, conceivably, Ram could have gotten his own stated experience in the same or less time. But a longer time seems more probable (especially since Ram's experience involved contact with the User world, subject to User time).
In my personal headcanon (not compliant with the novel, really, or with anything much beyond onscreen canon of the 82 movie) I imagine that the Encom system is special, and is one of very few systems "haunted" by the programmers' "spirits" in such a way. In the stories I write, programs imported to Encom from elsewhere become sentient when they enter the Encom system... and while they have factual memories of their previous experience, any emotional context to those memories will be colored by how the program currently thinks and feels, once subject to the Encom phenomenon.
So, I personally imagine that Ram is older than Tron chronologically, but he's had thoughts and feelings for a shorter time than Tron has.
I'm not sure how much sense this makes, but it strikes me as somehow right... and seems to fit with Ram's peculiarly charming personality, which to me gives off vibes of "experienced and knowing" as well as "playful and innocent." He's really a remarkable program.
A family movie
2023/09/27
First posted here on Tumblr.
I just realized another layer of why I like the 1982 movie more than Legacy.
The first movie was a movie concept by an independent writer who pitched it to Disney.
The second one was... a movie made by Disney.
You can see this distinction in a lot of the details. But I think what stands out the most to me-- what cements the first movie as My Kind of Thing, and the second movie as Too Disney To Be My Favorite... is how it approaches the concept of family.
Original movie had basically NO mention of families at all. As far as I can recall, no one even once mentioned blood relationships except for Kevin Flynn playfully calling Yori "mommy" at one point. The emphasis was on friendships and work relationships... the connections that you ideally have some degree of choice in. The happy ending --which I found so beautifully relatable -- wasn't about connecting with a long-lost relative; wasn't even about getting married with the goal of starting one's own eventual blood family. It was about found-family and it was amazing.
The second movie... well, Disney always loves a simple, old-fashioned story formula about the importance of connecting with your relatives.
Weird, considering how much Disney also loves giving the protagonist a dead mom. They basically made Sam Flynn a Disney Princess.
And the central storyline is as simple as any of the simplest Disney storylines.
- Kid who grew up without Dad goes looking for him.
- Finds him.
- Conflict over how badly Dad handled the entire thing (so badly, every step of the way, I have trouble even conceptualizing how his thought process could've gone)
- ending shows the correct family-friendly outcome: Dad acknowledges how badly he screwed up; Son forgives dad; Dad atones for his sins with self-sacrifice; Son takes rightful place and lives on. (Not a bad formula in itself... just... a very very Disney sort of simplicity.)
Not saying it wasn't a fun movie. Brilliant in many ways. Definitely loved quite a lot of parts of it. But my favorite parts don't include the central storyline. The way the 82 movie messes around with turning relationship tropes on their head is MUCH more original and appealing to me.
Anonymous asked:
I think it's quite telling that the most interesting aspects of Legacy are the things that fall outside the cliche "reconnecting with your blood family" narrative.
Oh, absolutely!
(I think that's common to most Disney movies. The character arc / relationship development is very seldom the most interesting part of the movie.)
(I mean I'm not sure it was THE most interesting part of the 82 movie either, but that one definitely tore apart every expected trope of how a romance subplot is supposed to go & I love it for that)
Finn
2023/09/27
First posted here on Tumblr.
I don't know a whole lot about Adventure Time
But apparently it's about a guy named "Finn"
who fights an enemy who looks like this
So I guess I'm gonna be a fan now
Dice
2023/09/24
First posted here on Tumblr.
D&D die that technically has the capacity for 8-bit communication but doesn't actually LIKE any of the numbers except the one that means "yes" in binary
(complete set of Bit dice= yellow D8, grey D20 and a red caltrop)
Crom
2023/09/24
First posted here on Tumblr.
Crom deserved better but Chrome deserves exactly this:
...listen, my fanfic writing future could go a lotta ways but I can definitely see a "Real Program Fic" phase happening somewhere in there
Epic fight scene, ending in the deresolution of Chrome
At the hands of Firefox
(the only browser left who still Fights for the Users and not the Corporations)
(yes Firefox is an anthropomorphic fox character. Yes, in a 82 grid suit. He'll be adorable. Computer Robin Hood to Tron's Computer Knight)
What did Ram hear?
2023/09/18
First posted here on Tumblr.
so, we see this scene quoted pretty often.
But... when, exactly, did Ram actually hear "the new guy" asking about Tron?
Before this, Flynn had talked to Ram twice. First time, Tron was there too. That conversation consisted of:
-Ram tells him to be careful of the forcefields
-Ram tells him he's a guest of the MCP and will have to play games
-Flynn says he plays games great & is not worried
Second time, Ram was there alone doing tricks with his disk when Flynn came in.
That conversation consisted of:
-Flynn compliments Ram on the skill with his disk
-Ram tells Flynn his name & previous job
-Flynn tells Ram his name and that he doesn't remember much
-Ram assures him it'll come back
No one mentioned Tron in either of these encounters.
In between them, while Flynn is walking in line with a lot of other new conscripts (presumably on the way to training), he does ask about Tron:
-Who's that?
-That's Tron. He fights for the Users.
But that exchange was with another conscript we never see again... as far as I can tell, Ram is nowhere nearby.
So, I'm guessing that line, "the new guy was asking about you," is in reference to a cut scene, and no one ever got around to taking it out.
There is a mention on the wiki that there was originally going to be a scene about Ram helping train Flynn. I can imagine Flynn would have asked Ram about Tron during that.
Watching through the scenes again, I don't see any reason that training scene couldn't have happened offscreen in the time between them.
And because the reference to it still remains in canon dialogue, I'm gonna take that scene as canon.
(Dunno what I'll do with that, but it's good to have it in my database anyway just in case.)
(update, in reply to a comment that the novelization of 1982 shows that conversation as well as the training)
Ok that makes lots of sense. I think I do remember that from the novel...
And I did notice, when watching the scene where he and Ram tell each other about themselves... at the end, right before he gets taken away, he LOOKS at Tron's part of the cell and acts like he really WANTS to ask about him.
I imagine at this point he remembers seeing Tron there last time, and got enough of a look at him to know that that was the same guy he saw fighting while he was on the way to training
(though didn't yet get a good enough look at his face to see how much he looks like Alan, 'cause we know he's surprised when he sees that later)
It's strange that they would cut the part about Flynn asking Ram about Tron, without cutting the part where Ram says he was asking
BUT, I can also imagine that Ram is extremely sensitive to the needs of others
and totally noticed that Flynn was asking about Tron with his eyes and body language, even though he didn't get a chance to ask out loud
(always helping prepare for future needs, that's Ram)
<3
Long Range
2023/09/16
First posted here on Tumblr.
...LORA WOULD APPROVE
popcorn coworker
2023/09/13
First posted here on Tumblr.
"Tron answer me something."
"Anything, Alan-1"
"imagine there's a guy at your workplace"
"I work with many guys, Alan-1"
"okay but imagine one of them is the guy that everyone calls 'popcorn coworker'"
"what does popcorn mean"
"it's a thing we eat. that's not important. just imagine there's a guy at your workplace and he's the Popcorn Coworker"
"...imagining. Further details?"
"No, now I've got a question for you"
"I think I still have more questions than you do"
"No I just need your opinion.
Do you imagine that Popcorn Coworker is a guy who MAKES popcorn?"
"Again I am not sure because I do not know what popcorn is"
"But just off the top of your head, from the syntax of the statement. WHO do you think BETTER DESERVES the title of POPCORN COWORKER?"
"...um"
"the guy who MAKES IT?"
"...um"
"Or the guy who WALKS UP TO THAT GUY AND SAYS 'HEY COULD I EAT SOME OF YOUR POPCORN'"
"I mean you defined popcorn as 'a thing you eat' so personally I think that second guy"
"SHUT UP RAM"
Cycling
2023/09/13
First posted here on Tumblr.
i have given up trying to ride a bicycle in Los Angeles
because even running reflective tape along every surface of bike and rider, and placing large bright lights all over it everywhere, is not enough to keep one safe, in this horrific kind of traffic
BUT
i am considering
maybe the inspiration I take from TRON's Lightcycles should not stop at just the Light
allow me to illustrate
(hey.
i COULD have found a way to make colliding with the ribbon cause immediate deresolution
i am being NICE to you, los angeles drivers
still nicer than you'll ever be to me)
Mole Interest
2023/09/13
First posted here on Tumblr.
...
(Posted while "mole interest," a tag apparently for posting pictures of moles, was trending on Tumblr, and I was deep in my fascination with making jokes about Crom the Compound Interest Program, Peter Jurasik's character from Tron 1982)
Compound interest
Mole interest
...
COMPOUND MOLE INTEREST
...
Mole and Compound Interest both coming out of their holes to shame Compound Mole Interest
...
...my pun brain just added "CROMpound interest" and then "Londo MOLE-ari" to this whole mess and now I am GOING to take a break from the internet before i turn into something even more eldritch than I am already
i am sorry peter jurasik, i have done such horrible things to the roles (and moles) you've played
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ziraphale
2023/09/10
First posted here on Tumblr.
OH.
so,
this is the most horrendous enormous spoiler
BUT
in light of
this post about Disc Wars and how fuckin poetic it is to use your IDENTITY as a weapon
AND this post about what an ABSOLUTE FUCKIn TRON GEEK michael sheen is
i gotta say
this scene hits
especially strong
(i dont know WHY i am even including the gif.)
(if you haven't yet watched GoodOmens2, you seeing this would be an absolutely apocalyptic spoiler that I could never be forgiven for
and if you have, you 100% already know what I am referring to)
#gonna start a war are you
#Castor gonna cast the first disc
#in the motherfuckin disc wars
#thats your angel identity, bro
(i was willing to give benefit of doubt to Aziraphale's obsession with "Clue"... but after Crowley made sure to put on a fez in the same episode that referenced Doctor Who, I realized this is the same show that deliberately picked a hair dye color numbered #666 and definitely DOES put THAT much thought into things)
clueless
2023/09/07
First posted here on Tumblr.
...NO YOU DONT
YOU WANT TO STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM HIM CASTOR
data? pushing? inoperative?
2023/09/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
one of many many delightful bits of RANDOM WTF CONFUSING
in this bizarre movie
so Tron and Yori walk past these... whoever they are
and there's a little dialogue
I'm not completely sure if these phrases ("inoperative data pushers" and "control programs") are both answers to the same question. (Probably not; I'm guessing the "control programs" are the guards they want to avoid.) But either way, there are so many interpretations for what the heck any of that could even MEAN.
Why are the Data Pushers Inoperative?
Do they... not work?
Are they not actually "pushing data," whatever is meant by that?
Or is "data pushing" what they do when they can't be "operative" in the way they are supposed to?
like becoming a drug dealer 'cause you lost your job?
is their Inoperative status the reason why they do not look like Users?
Nobody is Operating them
they are not Usable
they HAVE no Users so they... degrade to the point of not looking like anyone
?
And... if they do also include the "control programs"...
is this "control" in the sense of "the part of a study where nothing actually is done, so you can compare it to the part where you DO something"
is it, in this sense, a SYNONYM to "inoperative"?
and if so, in WHAT the hell study are they acting as the control group
...OR
are they control programs in the same sense as THIS GUY
hahahahhomfg that was the VERY wrong search result but i'm laughing so hard i'm keeping it ROFL
....nah i mean
i mean him
do they not look like a User for whatever same weird reason the MCP does not look like a User
are they, like
the Minion Control Programs to his Master Control Program
and if so
why are they Inoperative
is he that hilariously incompetent
did he not pay them enough and they're Quiet Quitting
who KNOWS
there ARE NO ANSWERS
I LOVE THIS MOVIE
Life and... Non-Life
2023/10/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
Do you think Ram was a Life Actuary or a Non-Life Actuary?
That is, do you think he worked in health or life insurance, or property insurance?
Part of me wants to say property insurance because I've been a pharmacy tech for years and had soooo many bad interactions with health insurance and I don't WANT to think about that poor sweetheart being involved with that hellscape and tragically thinking he's just helping people plan for the future, all innocently oblivious to what a hellscape it is.
Not that property insurance is all great either but at least it's not gambling with lives
BUT that's just wishful thinking, what I'd like to believe. I can't think of any actual canon evidence offhand, to support one or another type of insurance for his workplace.
(Regardless, I really want to believe that he survives somehow and does NOT go back to the insurance company, having learned the value of fighting for the Users and not the Corporations.)
(I mean he's still gonna be involved with a corporation, if he stays in the Encom system... but I imagine he's gonna be laser-focused on what he can do for the philanthropic side of Encom, even to the possible detriment of Profits)
TITLE
2023/10/19
First posted here on Tumblr.
Did all you Tronblr nerds read this wrong in the same way I did
(this is not a box of something I own, I saw it at my cousin's house.)
(had to look up what Lutron is. Seems to be a brand of remote controlled smart lighting... kinda cool as a concept in some ways but I would definitely not put that Internet of Shit in my own home)
(Hey at least it's not the Dyson Lightcycle)
(...yeh that's a thing)
Flynneapolis, Flynnesota
2023/10/16
First posted here on Tumblr.
hahahah I did it
I did the thing
That I'd been wanting to make sure I did at least once, while I was in Minneapolis
The subtle and stealthily Tron-related thing
i.e.
drawing this design on a t-shirt
2. getting on the Metro Transit bus
3. going to Flynn's
i can testify that Flynn's in Richfield MN has
- no arcade
- hollywood-themed decor with conspicuous absence of any reference to THAT movie franchise
- solidly meh food
and also absolutely no one noticed what I was doing
but I STILL HAVE NO REGRETS
different ways to de-rez
2023/10/12
First posted here on Tumblr.
1. losing the disc game
you become a glowy ball, which then saunters vaguely upward.
does this mean you go to program heaven?
who knows.
anyway you're not here anymore.
2. losing the ring game
again, you become a glowy ball.
not enough footage available to say what happens to the glowy ball.
even less certainty of program heaven than a disc de-rez
3. losing the lightcycle game
there isn't even a glowy ball!
there's just a glowy crash and you're gone
what a way to go
(maybe your sacrifice helps someone else escape tho)
4. getting hit in self-defense by a disc warrior cuz you're a cop who's after him
you just spin and fall down and then you fade to nothing, in the course of a couple frames.
no glowy effects at all.
very undignified and un-flashy way to de-rez
5. tortured to death by mcp
very cool graphics. you fade away while sorta turning into a visual representation of gridspace or something.
no record of where your energy vanishes to.
no glowy ball that goes upwards or anything
probably either super painful or super pleasurable, going by how clu screams here
you do get to die with the knowledge that the MCP was totally lying to everyone and totally does believe in Users and cares about them enough he wants to know who yours is (but lol you didn't tell him)
6. absorbed by kevin flynn to use as circuit disguise
he honestly didn't mean to
he's sorry
but he needed the disguise
you SORT OF become a glowy ball
but it then dissipates into little sparkles that then seem to return into the system and become part of the structures around you
kinda neat. like organic life dying and returning to the earth
is this different effect because you got derezzed by a User?
who knows
anyway you helped him escape, hope you're ok with that
7. succumbing to wounds from a fall, while holding the hand of the User who tried to save you
strangely similar to the previous
similarly, you become little lines of sparks that flow away in all different directions to rejoin the System
is this because a User was involved?
...did Kevin Flynn screw up and accidentally kill someone with his User powers again
is that the meaning of this pattern in similar de-rez graphics
(geez kevin wtf)
anyway you became part of your surroundings again
are you part of the Recognizer now?
does the Recognizer now have a sentient AI who would rather be an actuary
who knows
anyway you gone now
hey! question!
2023/10/07
First posted here on Tumblr.
for those who are not face-blind in a way that gets exponentially compounded by movies that cover the actors' hair and remove all the color from their faces, LOL
...okay
so
here is the guy Sark beats at lightcycles, in the opening scene of TRON 1982
aaand
here is the guy Flynn beats at lightcycles in the scene where he breaks out of the game grid
...do you think this is the same guy???
'cause I kinda do, but then I honestly suck at recognizing faces. i am a pattern recognition program but not THAT kind of pattern recognition (honestly I think facial recognition is something no programs OR humans are nearly as good at as they claim, BUT that's a topic for another day)
but anyway, if they are the same...
does this mean Sark decided to let him live after that first match, on the condition that he would convert to Red? (in that case a very unlucky guy, doomed to get destroyed at lightcycles twice, once by each side in the war)
or... perhaps they were two different programs by the same programmer? (also cursed to be unlucky, I guess)
Gridbugged
2023/10/06
First posted here on Tumblr.
Reblogged from fights4users, who commented that "gridbugged" should be a program equivalent of the Stickbugged or Rickroll meme:
Comment from astercontrol
"get gridbugged" lol
Headcanon that that's what Yori was doing when she warned them about the chekov's gridbugs that they never actually had to deal with
The visuals of gridbugs we saw were just the troll Rickroll that popped up in their heads when Yori pinged it to them
makes more sense than "we see some gridbugs appear but we never see them actually interact with any of the characters or even get any idea of where they're appearing"
language of love
2023/10/06
First posted here on Tumblr.
What if we did portmanteau ship-names for the computer side of the Encom polycule
(F)lynn
Y(OR)I
(TR)on
R(AM)
Fortram
...okay SURE
if we get Alan in on this, it can ACTUALLY spell Fortran, like the computer language
(F)LYNN / Y(OR)I / (T)RON / (R)AM / AL(AN)
but that's a fic for much later
....Yortram are very happy the way they are, in my head right now
Sam vs Tron
2023/10/05
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ok so
You know how I love to imagine a world where the original copies of all the programs from Tron 1982 get to go on happily doing their jobs and living their lives within the Encom system
(whatever may be going on in that OTHER Grid)...
I like to imagine Tron and Yori and (rerezzed) Ram are all so good at their jobs that they're kept online permanently as Encom programs, upgrading as needed to keep up with the times, and that this goes on pretty much forever.
(because I want all my sweethearts to live happily ever after, okay!)
But... today I just realized the further implication of that...
The one where... if the events of Legacy still happen...
Sam Flynn is breaking through Encom security on a yearly basis to play pranks
Meaning:
Either he's regularly defeating Original Tron at the system security game...
...Or... Tron, somehow, is recognizing him and deliberately helping.
...I'm not yet sure what to do with this thought
But it is making me FEEL things
Counterpart
2023/10/03
First posted here on Tumblr.
Thoughts on the word "counterpart"
So, since I've seen a number of Tron fics use "counterpart" for a program's romantic partner...
...I've started to notice a thing in my own programming software.
Now, I don't understand what this means, because I don't actually write programs . I use BBEdit for making html pages for my website (and also AO3 fics, because they need to be formatted like html pages).
And all I can find in the BBEdit support is this stuff in the release notes for version 9.6:
...so, from that, I would guess that a program's "counterparts" are other programs that are somehow vitally involved in its functioning.
...And that a program can have more than one of them.
... Others with more coding knowledge, please contribute more context if possible?
The OT3
2023/10/02
First posted here on Tumblr.
I pasted together a few different photos because I wanted a picture of Tron and Yori and Ram all together.
three weeks of Ram Pizza
2023/11/30
First posted here and here on Tumblr.
Was I just supposed to know Ram is the football team mascot of the city I live in, or was I supposed to find out about it from a Little Caesars box
Ok Ram put away your disk but keep the helmet, I guess you play football now
There's apparently still gladiatorial games under the reign of Little Caesar
Friends & I are having a fun discussion about what "Ram's house" would look like...
Another week, another pizza night at Ram's House
Still dunno if Ram's response to me subsisting on garbage like Little Caesars pizza would be
"bitch you live like this? oh my User, lets get you some real food, you gotta think about your Future Needs!"
Or "hahaaa that looks like an AMAZING lunch almost as good as scrounging popcorn off your coworkers"
Update!
penny, farthing, tron and bit
2023/11/24
First posted here on Tumblr.
Being an artist is far too much power because you can just have a phrase pop into your head, like "penny-farthing lightcycle," and then you can just. Make it be a thing
but be careful
(because if you have the kind of messed-up brain that would DO this, then you may also end up with thoughts like: "they would not call it a penny farthing, though. What kind of currency do they use inside a computer" and then the Evil side of you will say "the crypty kind" and will also try to tell you that Bit and Tron both have crypt money named after them and you will have to smack that part of your brain and tell it to shut up)
I TAKE IT BACK
being an artist SUCKS
because you can get WRIST PROBLEMS and have to NOT draw art for a while but the IDEAS STILL COME
so you can for example think of something as adorable as "Roy Kleinberg and Ram lighting their 8-bit menorah"
and your brain can visualize it, of course (a Bit perched on each candlestick, as Ram touches the shamash-Bit to the first candle it goes "yes!" and the Bit on that candle flares from gray to yellow with a little "yes!" in reply)
But you CAN'T MAKE IT BE A THING
ARRRRGGH
TITLE
2023/11/24
First posted here on Tumblr.
Shave and a Haircut (Two Bits)
don't worry, it'll reset as soon as they stop saying "no."
But that'll be a while, because they are in a rebellious phase (call it the Terrible 10's)
I am still (I hope) recovering from some very bad ergonomic life choices and my hands still go numb within a minute of drawing BUT here, I could not hold myself back from doing this sketch. Happy whatever.
Grid Holidays
2023/11/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
Encom programs learn about the holidays
LORA BAINES: so Users have a bunch of special days we celebrate. most of them are based on User religions. Christmas is a celebration of when Christians believe their deity came down from heaven to save their world.
TRON : like Flynn?
KEVIN FLYNN: well--
ALAN BRADLEY: NO. NOT LIKE FLYNN
ROY KLEINBERG: so in our house we do Chanukah. that's about a miracle that occurred in our religion.
RAM: what sorta miracle?
ROY KLEINBERG: well there was a... lemme see if I can put it in terms you understand... an energy source that unexpectedly powered a runtime eight times longer than it was intended for?
RAM: coooooooool
CLU1: what is a New Year's Resolution? Is there a New Year's Deresolution?
KEVIN FLYNN: yeah that happens within a couple months after you make the New Year's Resolution. those things don't last long
HAHAHA yes
Flynn's face when he realizes Lora's laser is a bigger part of the Grid Christmas Story than he is
"well Flynn you gotta admit I actually invented the technology that permits us to rez in here. you just bumbled your way through that whole thing by accident"
"HEY! ...I risked my life! and for what? Oranges in their stockings. That's the only part of Christmas tradition they carried over? Oranges in the stockings!"
"Not the ONLY part. Who fills the stockings? Their Santa figure is based on you, Flynn. Reindeer flotilla and all. C'mon you gotta be happy about that!"
(...the programs found it easy to assign him the Santa role... while User Alan-1 refused to entertain any comparisons between Flynn and Christ, he readily acknowledged that "this guy's a little like Santa Claus.")
Aloo
2023/12/02
First posted here on Tumblr.
I think "Program Aloo" would be a good nickname for me
but it is unlikely to catch on, because there is VERY little overlap between the different circles of friends who:
- have seen Tron 1982 enough times to catch the brief reference to Program Aloo in the Solar Sailer scene
- know me from furry fandom as "Tiliquain" and know that Tiliqua is the blue tongue skink genus, and that reptile keepers often affectionately call blue tongued skinks "potatoes," and have therefore given me the affectionate nickname "potato"
have eaten at Indian restaurants enough times to know that Aloo means potato
TRONukah RAMeach
2023/12/07
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ok my hands are somewhat recovered from whatever was going on, so I am back to drawing A LITTLE, quick sketches mostly
heres Roy and Ram and the eight-bit menorah
Happy first day of Chanukah
...
my heart...
2024/12/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
...ok... I might actually want to know more about Kingdom Hearts.
Every time I look at this clip, my heart warms at the thought of happy Tron who greets new friends with a hug...
....and as dumb as it seems to me that Donald Duck is there, I might be able to tolerate that for the sake of seeing Tron being so adorable.
...the only time we non-gamers get to see Tron being all sweet and affectionate, the way he's meant to be, is in the 1982 movie. ...other than that, we only get Legacy where he's brainwashed into a killing machine, and Uprising where he's all traumatized and broody and can't open up to anyone.
but... this is always gonna be how I see him.
aaaaand I'm not gonna lie, I want more of that.
Two Rings
2023/12/25
First posted here on Tumblr.
"Alan?"
"NO. I AM RRRRRINZLER" (brandishes both discs)
..."Alan Tu-Ring?"
reply from systemadministratorclu:
I think Turing just rolled in his grave.
reply from astercontrol:
...#Rinzrolled.
Who is your User, Program?
2023/12/30
First posted here on Tumblr.
Well... there's no way to make this easy, really.
Several different perspectives on that complex question, "Who is your User?"... as directed toward the MCP himself.
On the Tron Wiki, both Gibbs and Dillinger are listed.
Looking for evidence of these claims in onscreen canon of the '82 movie, there's clear support for Dillinger:
I may be missing something, but I don't see any explicit claim of Walter Gibbs as the MCP's User...
...although he IS explicitly stated to be the founder of ENCOM, so it seems likely he would have been involved in writing the MCP when it was a chess program.
(His own program, Dumont, at least confirms he was there at the time.)
(Interestingly, right after Dumont says he's "old enough to remember the MCP when it was just a chess program," his next words are "He started small, and he'll end small." Someday I'll have to analyze in more depth these alternating he/it pronouns for MCP. Perhaps "it" was the pronoun used back in the Chess Days?)
The prologue of the Tron: Betrayal comic offers another perspective on MCP's creation, but this is narrated by a version of Dumont who.... seems to have vastly distorted memories of what actually happened:
"FLYNN WAS UNLIKE THE OTHER USERS. HE WAS, AND IS, A CREATOR. HE MADE ORDER FROM THE CHAOS OF ONES AND ZEROES."
...um. I think you transposed the words "chaos" and "order" there, program.
"HIS FINEST CREATION, THE MASTER CONTROL PROGRAM, REBELLED AND TRIED TO DESTROY HIM. THE MCP BROUGHT FLYNN TO THE GRID."
...setting aside the confusion of what exactly "The Grid" refers to here... even IF Kevin Flynn created the MCP, I cannot imagine anyone calling it his "finest" creation.
(Even by Flynn's own evaluation, at the time of the '82 movie, his infiltrator program Clu1 was "the best program ever written." Sorry, MCP, that sweet little User's boy is better'n you.)
But anyway.
The Tron Wiki acknowledges that Dumont's narration here is incorrect:
But we do, at least, know that Flynn interacted in some capacity with the MCP when it was a chess program:
Could he have worked on beta-testing and/or debugging the chess functions?
If not the original programmer, he may at least have been involved in development of the MCP, in some capacity.
But now let's look at the MCP's own viewpoint on its origin.
When Dillinger says "I wrote you!" this is how MCP responds:
He doesn't contradict Dillinger's claim to have written him, but he dismisses it as unimportant, in light of how far he's come since Dillinger did any of that writing.
Then, when Sark makes a similar admonishment:
This time, the MCP does contradict him, claiming he doesn't have one singular User. Rather, he considers himself a collaborative project so vast that any individual contributor is unimportant.
So, even if Dillinger and Gibbs-- and maybe Flynn-- were all involved in developing him... from his own hubris-soaked perspective, none of it even matters.
Is this the face of his original User?
Who cares.
He started small and he ended small.
Reply from coupleofdays:
The old man we see just before the MCP finally disappears is actually played by Barnard Hughes, which suggests to me that the MCP was indeed originally created by Gibbs. It would definitely be in character if Dillinger then stole and "improved" the program, claiming that it was his own creation. Dillinger's additions might explain that while the "face" of the MCP is played by Hughes, the voice is done by David Warner. So even in the real life, the MCP is a collaborative effort! This would also suggest that Dumont and the MCP might be something akin to "brothers", which might give some interesting layers to Dumont's comments about his sibling. I have toyed with the idea of writing a prequel fanfic about "The Rise of the MCP", about an initially humanoid and friendly "Master Chess Program" that is slowly corrputed into a kind of digital vampire, sucking up functions from other Programs. There would probably be some scary body horror scenes where he begins to mutate into the towering red cone we all know and love. The big thing that's holding me back from writing it is that I know very little about chess, so I feel like I would have to do some major research to make sure that the MCP's dialogue (not to mention his thinking process) is sufficently chess-infused.
Reply from astercontrol:
This is all so fascinating!! Love these ideas!!
I wonder if MCP's disregard for his Users is related to the ... dilution he forced onto himself.
Like maybe he's absorbed so many other programs, he considers the writer of each one to be his "User" in a sense, but with so many they just all become insignificant, and he doesn't really value Gibbs or Dillinger above any of them.
Maybe other programs like Sark and Dumont do think of him as a sibling (half-sibling?) but by this point MCP has so many "siblings" he doesn't care.
Reply from anonmonitor:
^^^ when he assimilates programs he says something along the lines of 'soon you will become a part of me' which means that he could have several hundred different creators which is backed up by him saying that 'hes worth millions of their man years' while an exaggeration; it confirms that they do become him as he refers to the creation time of all of the programs hes assimilated its like a chunk of conglomerate; while made up of many many tiny stones; the stone itself is still considered 1 stone and yet all the hundreds of stones that make it are all incredibly different in type; colour; texture and probably age the only thing that looks consistent over the whole rock is the brown substance that holds it all together which if destroyed; the 1 stone would separate into its many parts once more. thats what i like to think happened at the end of the movie
Reply from astercontrol:
YES EXACTLY ALL THIS!!!
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