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Tron Essays and Explorations (SFW) 2024
Program Pets
2024/01/12
First posted here on Tumblr.
In reply to from alerted-red, who commented that it would be cool to see more "creatures" in Tron:
All of this!!!!
I think I read the fic you're referring to, and yeah I'm pretty sure that author made up the creatures all on their own! There are "code worms" in Uprising but they are small and parasitic (extremely disturbing episode, yeahhhh)
(There are probably other creatures in the videogames, but I haven't heard of any worms in those.)
Anyway YES I LOVE creative explorations of how IRL computer science could apply to the Tron universe, and seriously, canon does NOT have enough Creatures.
(got a fic idea on a back burner about a program who tames and trains gridbugs as a side job. I figure, pest animals are often the ones most easily domesticated, because they've already acclimated themselves to living around people... Soooo imagine a program who gets a call to deal with a gridbug infestation and goes in all Pied Piper of Hamelin playing a song of reprogramming, and next thing you know the bugs are doing your housework for you)
comment by coupleofdays:
Would bring a new meaning to the expression "it's not a bug, it's a feature".
comment by astercontrol:
<3<3<3
Ohhhh I just thought of something...
So, there are a few different reasons why Pest to Pet can be a pretty easy transition. Some of the reasons have to do with the fact that the domestication has already partway happened-- the most successful domestications, after all, are the ones where animals and people just shared space and resources for enough centuries that they gradually figured out how to make the arrangement beneficial to both.
But there's also the fact that, if an animal is successfully living wild in your city, there's a good chance it was a domestic animal at one point. Invasive species are often invasive because they were imported for human use. You can raise a wild pigeon from the streets and make it your pet because pigeons were bred to be pets and working animals, long before they were wild in most cities.
Translating that to the Grid: What if some Grid "pests" began as the sort of... extra junk that's included in many of the electronics and software we buy? I mean the stuff that's not really malware, we promise, it's got a purpose, it's important for the thing you bought, we swear, just mostly not in ways that'll ever be beneficial to YOU...
and of course when it gets introduced to a place like the Grid or the Encom system, it becomes a hell of an invasive critter, because its code is more about just surviving than helping any of the Programs or Users there.
And yet. It did begin life as a domestic creature, designed to do something for someone. Maybe just to spy on you and send your data to its true User-- but still, it is capable of that, capable of loyalty to a user, even if that user is now nowhere to be found.
And maybe, maybe, like taming a wild pigeon, maybe someday those instincts could be turned around. Maybe the bug can become a feature... can find a new purpose, someone new to be loyal to.
Maybe all it takes is a little love.
comment by astercontrol:
hahaaa I just woke up with a "training the Grid pigeon" scene stuck in my head
"sit"
pigeon sits down all fluffy like on a nest
"roll over"
pigeon leaps up and does a flying somersault
"fetch"
pigeon does nothing
"fetch my email!"
pigeon looks at you all confused
"git fetch [ emails ]"
pigeon runs off and comes back with your email in a little tube strapped to its leg
"coo"
pigeon makes no sound
"sudo coo"
pigeon generates 9x9 grid with numbers in some of the squares
"wtf"
Ram and Castor
2024/02/06
First posted here on Tumblr.
So...
I just watched Legacy again.
And... I keep coming back to the Ram-Castor theory.
Which first sparked from a paragraph on the Tron wiki, attributed in the footnote to Tron: Evolution...
This blew my mind, because... cryptic as it is, I found it easiest to interpret as:
- The program that became Castor/Zuse was originally an interpreter program created by Kevin Flynn.
- At some point, another program-- this "low-priority actuarial algorithm" -- took over his identity and took his place.
- and... you know where my mind goes when I think of actuarial programs.
- As far as I know, only one character ever canonically was described as such.
- One who I cannot help but think of in the same category as Zuse.
- (i.e., queer-coded, fun-loving, my favorite character in the damn movie, and died too damn soon.)
But... what would it take, for Ram to become Castor??
My initial impression was:
- Ram gets rerezzed on the Grid, before the coup.
- Perhaps Flynn sneaks in one of Roy's backups.
- (Maybe this backup, unknown to Flynn, has been updated with some hacker code, for purposes of Zack-Attack shenanigans.)
- And this Ram 2.0 is the "actuarial algorithm" who eventually assumes the identity of Castor/Zuse.
This thought happened months and months ago.
But now, having rewatched Legacy just now, the ideas have...
.... expanded.
Into the realm of the... something.
Here goes.
As to how Ram started out on the Grid:
- I imagine that Flynn tried to give him something approaching his original purpose. Actuarial math is concerned with calculating probabilities, and this is useful for plenty of things besides setting insurance premiums.
- (Ram probably would prefer many of those alternatives over setting insurance premiums, once he learns just how little insurance companies actually do to help people.)
- His actuarial nature might even have him calculating probabilities about Clu, long before Flynn and Tron do... and seeing danger coming miles away.
- And you know Flynn wouldn't have listened to his warnings.
- Maybe this causes Ram to go into hiding early, before things with Clu go... clearly bad.
- Now. Once in hiding, when the Purge starts, of course Ram decides to help the ISOs. He's a helper by nature. And he's lived under oppression and genocide.
- Already he'll need to do this in some secrecy.
- And this may very well be when he "reinvents" himself for the first time.
- So. He hacks his way into the place of this ...interpreter program that wasn't yet doing much of anything.
- He takes on the new appearance, and the name Zuse.
- He uses his hacking skills further, to control Solar Sailers and the permissions on other programs' discs, all in the name of getting ISOs to safety.
- (This is all mentioned in the wiki, as well, attributed again to Evolution.)
- (There also seem to be... hints? that Zuse himself is an ISO? but this is not clear on either the wiki, or in Legacy. There may be more data in Evolution? In any case, I'm proceeding on the assumption that he is not an ISO, just a regular program who may have been co-opted or hacked by another one.)
At the point in Legacy where Sam meets Zuse, some pieces fell together rather clearly for me.
When he says:
"Zuse has been around since the earliest days of the gaming grid. By necessity, he has to mind all the percentages, all the angles."
- it feels to me that he was clearly talking about his past as Ram, the actuary.
- Perhaps calculating percentages of probability for gaming purposes-- betting odds and such-- back when the games were just for fun?
- But, as he said, it was self-preservation that made him change his identity.
With the Purge over, and Clu attaining greater and greater power... he had to reinvent himself again, to stay safe from Clu's wrath against anyone who supported either ISOs or Users.
So he gave himself the name Castor, instead, and kept the Zuse identity under wraps.
- "Castor" is actually a fairly clever choice of name. If he was going to go the Greek-gods route, "Ares" would have been the obvious code for Ram (the ram being the symbol for Ares/Aries).
- (...AND I continue to pray, probably without hope, that Jared Leto keeps his mitts off of Ram completely. But, that's another topic.)
- Ares was a son of Zeus.
- Unclear whether this was why Ram chose the Zuse name... or whether the program had that name already before Ram took over him.
- (The wiki suggests that, like many names in Tron lore, it was an allusion to a famous name in computing history. In-universe, Flynn could certainly have named a program with such inspiration.)
- In mythology, Castor was... one of the twins born to Leda after Zeus impregnated her.
- But the pregnancy had two different fathers, and Castor was not the twin fathered by Zeus.
- From the perspective of a Ram in hiding, "Castor" could be taken to mean "false disguise for a true son of Zeus."
- Not saying that was the sort of thing Ram himself would have come up with.
- It's what I would have come up with, in his position.
- But I am not an actuarial program.
- I am a goddamn pattern recognition program. This is obvious.
- So, the above is likely all irrelevant.
Moving on!
By this point, Ram/Castor/Zuse might be pretty disillusioned with the Users, honestly.
- Flynn's in hiding, doing nothing! He let Tron get corrupted, Yori either disappeared or never got rezzed in, and a tyrant with Flynn's face is in charge of everything!
- I would NOT blame Ram for being unconvinced that changes at the top actually make a difference; that one leader's better than another.
- I would not blame him for being earnest in saying, "I believed in Users once before."
And then, of course, the betrayal!
Clu's guards barge in. Zuse.... stands back and lets everything happen. Gives them free rein to attack Sam. Stands back and watches in glee, as the whole thing goes down.
Watches Sam fighting back. Watches Kevin Flynn and Quorra bursting in to help. Watches the whole fight. Just watches, dancing and firing energy bolts randomly into the whole mess like a madman, as if he has no stake in it one way or another!
It would be easy to interpret this a number of ways.
1. He has gotten truly vengeful toward the Flynns, to the point of losing his grip on reality.
2. He has gotten truly vengeful toward EVERYONE, to the point of losing his grip on reality.
3. Perhaps his personality has even split somewhat-- the Castor and Zuse personas becoming somewhat separate entities?
- (This would fit with the idea that he started this whole business by co-opting the identity of another program!)
- (Maybe that program's mind was always trapped somewhere within him... fighting him.)
- (Maybe it came to the surface more and more often as time went on... becoming a sort of possessing demon with very different views about everything Ram used to care for.)
BUT.
There is one other possibility.
Let's take a look at just what he promised, and to whom, and just how the promises were followed through on.
- First, to Sam.
He offered Sam a change of attire, a forged disc, and "transport to cross the Sea of Simulation."
- And then he stood back, and made no attempt to either help or hinder Sam or his helpers or his attackers...
- and the fight played out as fate would have it, letting Sam and Kevin and Quorra escape to safety...
- as they, most surely, would...
- as they could have been predicted to...
- from the viewpoint of one whose probability-calculations have always been informed by faith.
- One who, deep down, does still believe in the Users.
He might... just possibly... still care.
Also, consider.
Zuse does not allow Clu's guard to take the disc he stole from Kevin. He appropriates it for himself, as a bargaining chip to use with Clu.
For what? "Control of the city. A sizeable request, I know."
Here might be where Zuse finally miscalculates. He was expecting, or at least hoping, that there was a chance Clu would honor his end of the bargain.
- If Clu had, indeed, allowed him control of the city, it would have given him an advantage from a large number of "angles"-- no matter how the political side of things played out.
- It could have given him leverage to help the Flynns later on, and undo the damage caused by the theft of the disc.
- He might, quite possibly, have predicted that Sam and Kevin would both be able to recover from the immediate problem of the disc being lost.
- For all we know, that brilliant probability-calculating mind might have already had a plan for that, and for how to help them later.
- And even if that plan failed...it could certainly have permitted Zuse to be involved on a much larger scale in the resistance.
- (Kevin, deep in his "zen thing," had even said that programs forming a resistance from within could have a better chance of taking Clu down than he himself ever could.)
- (Zuse might, at some point, have agreed with him on that, and prepared himself to play a part in it.)
But.
All this seems lost.
- Because, instead of honoring the deal, Clu just takes the disc, and then blows up the End of Line Club with Zuse and Gem inside it.
However...
We can easily imagine that someone with the previously displayed skills in
- hacking
- hiding
- taking on new identities
- calculating probabilities
- and playing all angles / planning for all possible outcomes
...might have kept a backup of himself somewhere safer?
In any case.
Whatever was going on in Zuse's mind, in regard to helping or not helping the Users, and preparing or not preparing for Clu's betrayal...
you can't deny two things.
1. He doesn't give Clu any leads to find the Flynns. He tries to convince him they're already dead.
and, once they do escape...
2. ...there just happens to be a Solar Sailer right in reach, waiting for them to sneak on.
A "transport to cross the Sea of Simulation." Just as promised.
...Just my thoughts.
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Party
2024/01/10
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"
(Update: second installment, lol)
"...hey Tron"
"yes Flynn"
"how was the party?"
"which party?"
"yknow. The LAN one. Which I am totally not upset I wasn't invited to-- wait, were there OTHER parties?"
"It went fine, KevinFlynn"
"...just fine?"
"it went great"
"do you wanna tell me about it? like was it fun? you play something? was there a tournament?"
"yes there was, Flynn"
"cool! who won? Did you win? Did Roy win?"
"A--"
"...NEVERMIND"
Citrus
2024/01/11
First posted here on Tumblr.
When they start rezzing in other fruits besides oranges....
ciTRON: he fights for the Yuzus
wibbly wobbly time
2024/01/29
First posted here on Tumblr.
So I've been thinking about the time system in the ENCOM system...
The Tron wiki pretty much ONLY talks about the time system as it applies on the Grid in Legacy.
(Saying that a millicycle is about eight hours, and a cycle is about a year and about a fiftieth of a year in the User world).
But that would make a microcycle about half a minute in Grid time.
Which doesn't make sense with Ram talking about being stuck in the cells for 200 microcycles. He says it like he's been there weeks or months, at least. Not hours or less.
So, in my writing (which is set in the Encom system) I tend to treat an Encom microcycle as a day.
But while working on my latest story, I had reason to wonder what exactly an ENCOM year is, then.
And I think I've figured it out.
ENCOM programs are made to interact regularly with the User world. So, their time system would be connected much more closely to User time.
So, I suspect an ENCOM "cycle" is equivalent to a year in User time.
And a millicycle should be a thousandth of that, and a microcycle a millionth.
So for ENCOM programs, if a microcycle is a day, then a cycle is like a million days (and a millicycle is like a thousand days).
That would mean (if I'm doing my math right, which is not certain, lol) one ENCOM cycle is like over two thousand years for a program.
so I think, from now on, if I want to write about a period of time that's more like a year for an ENCOM program, I'm gonna say maybe... a quarter-millicycle.
Or, alternatively, if I don't want to deal with the time difference being THAT huge between the sides of those ENCOM screens ...
I guess a microcycle could still be about a day for the programs, but a User-side year could be closer to a millicycle (that'd have the programs waiting about a thousand of their days while 365 passed for the Users, which is still a big difference but not on the thousand -year level)
(which makes it much more feasible to arrange communication between both sides without someone having to talk reeeeeealll slllooooww)
But... then one would kinda have to wonder who decided to base their whole time system around the concept of a "cycle," to begin with... (Since that still makes it a million days for the programs and a thousand years for the Users, which is an amount of time far longer than either the Users or the Programs would normally have to deal with)
(And I still suspect these numbers are approximate, in any case, and can be affected by how fast the computers are currently running...)
Okay, now a few more things occurred to me.
Now, as for the contrast of one year to thousands of years.... programs and Users would have very different feelings about this sort of thing.
For every task that sounds absolutely ridiculous to a User, there are probably programs that find it perfectly ordinary because it's part of what they're programmed to do . Looking at things from a program viewpoint requires throwing out a lot of the human viewpoint, and replacing it with the simple question, "Is this within my programming?" If yes, it's fine! If no, then-- at the very least-- it feels weird and wrong.
So, since programs are meant to interact with Users, they're probably okay with waiting any amount of time-- even a couple thousand years-- for something a User would wait one year for... as long as that wait is within typical expected function for the program.
OR... alternatively...
Perhaps a microcycle for ENCOM programs really is like half a minute, and Ram really had been locked up for only about 100 minutes from his viewpoint...
...but, by the same logic above, it still felt far too long to Ram, because he wasn't programmed to be in prison and fighting gladiator battles for even one minute.
Perhaps those minutes even literally felt to him like days or longer, because he was stuck doing something so far outside his programming.
Maybe for programs, the phenomenon of "time flies when you're having fun and time drags when you're not" is a much more vivid and literal time-dilation effect than it is for Users.
And... maybe this explains why Ram (a nerdy math calculator, by programming) turned out to be so startlingly successful as a fighter in the games.
Maybe he felt so damn uncomfortable, so far outside his rightful role, that the drag of all that time gave him freakin' Flash powers compared to the Red warriors who were enjoying themselves.
...I don't know how much sense this makes, it literally just occurred to me now. I have yet to examine all the implications. (For one, it would mean that Sark's request for military programs was probably a request for easier opponents rather than harder ones, even if he didn't admit that. Which is an intriguing idea but does NOT fit into the story very well. I shall have to give this a bit more thought.)
Reply from anonmonitor:
I always had the headcanon that the time dilation of in computer vs out of computer time is entirely dependant on the system clock cycles, that is the speed at which the physical circuitry (either crystal oscillator or RLC circuit) switches between states, which is how fast the system runs (and how much heat it generates). Which would make sense! The Encom system would be clocked slower than The Grid as it's an older system as well as the fact that The Grid is supposed to be a supercomputer. So the time difference between the Encom system and real-time would be smaller than that of The Grid.
As for the wait time, ye olde mainframes (pre-pc era) were generally not turned on for very long as they were incredibly power inefficient and thus VERY expensive to run. You pretty much got 1 chance a day to run/test your program in the punch card days (punch cards are quite a bit older than the Encom system but it may still apply. Most didn't stick with punch cards for very long when they got access to tape). I could imagine that whatever insurance company that Ram was a part of was not using the most up to date system at the time as those costed more to rent when an older system would still do the job fine.
Reply from astercontrol:
Oh wow that is all fascinating! Hey I'm always happy to get technical background on these things-- even if I don't fully grasp it right away it still REALLY enhances my fascination with the world of the movies and gets my creativity speculating in really enjoyable ways!
Yeah I had always kinda figured the in-system time could depend on clock speed and could maybe vary from time to time based on that... As well as that some of it was filtered through Flynn's perception and he may not have been perceiving everything in there exactly as it was from the programs' viewpoint.
Question about what you're getting at in the last bit... Are you saying the mainframe of the system Ram came from could be affecting how he perceived time after being transferred to the Encom system? Like, because software that was designed to run (or had been running) on an older system wouldn't be calibrated for Encom's timekeeping, or what?
Anyway I love all this, thank you very much!
Reply from anonmonitor:
Yes actually! Many programs used to tie their run speed to the system clock, which resulted in them running really, really fast when they would be used on a higher clocked system. This sometimes made them unusable, especially in games. PC manufacturers eventually added a turbo button, which despite being called a TURBO button actually slowed the computer down so that the programs could run at their normal speeds. Some fancy ones even had seven segment displays showing the current clock speed.
Reply from astercontrol:
YESSS
...hmm, another thought.
If Ram being from a slower system was part of what made him extra fast and therefore good at the games, that's sorta in line with the idea I mentioned earlier in the thread...
...And it brings up the same question about Sark and the military programs.
I'm sure the military would have the absolute most cutting-edge system (goodness me, this was the 80s, cold war and all)
So I wonder what Sark was expecting from military programs. Wouldn't they be slower if transferred to Encom?
He seemed to be seeking them as more challenging opponents, so... I suppose whatever military skills they had would need to be good enough to make up for THAT.
And now it is slightly annoying me that we never met any of those military programs.
I kiiiind of want to write a fic about them now
slow-as-hell military programs with the wisdom of Sun Tzu, finding ways to use the slowness to their advantage
storing up "move one pixel" commands for a whole microcycle as they stand there pretending to be a statue, and then go full Weeping Angel on his ass
Reply from astercontrol:
One more thing that occurred to me! Tangentially related, because it's about the mess that is on-grid time, but probably not connected in any coherent way:
Yori's hand on the Solar Sailer control panel, as she explains that there won't be another juncture for 7 or 8 nanoseconds
Programs-- or at least Yori-- apparently know what nanoseconds are.
Or... at least they know of something that they use the word "nanoseconds" for.
Might not be anywhere near the thing that it means in the User world.
She seems to be using it to mean either a distance they'll have to travel, or the amount of time it would take to get there.
From our viewpoint watching their travel, that time is definitely more than a matter of nanoseconds. But then... we know more time passes on the inside.
Is she, for some reason, translating the time to what it would be out in the User world?
Or is Flynn just perceiving her saying it that way?
(I have a fairly strong headcanon that the Programs have little if any actual vocabulary from the User world... they mostly speak a computer language of their own devising... and the system that digitized Flynn acts kind of like the TARDIS in Doctor Who, connecting to his brainwaves and translating communication into something he might be likelier to understand. Perhaps with less-than-perfect success.)
Reply from coupleofdays:
I'm definitely fond of the idea that any inconsistencies in Tron, be they visual or even plot holes, are because of Flynn's mind struggling to comprehend the digital world, and his perception of it changing back and forth from time to time (since the laser wasn't intended to digitize humans). This could for example explain why Yori has different hats in different scenes, because Flynn's perception of her is somewhat unstable (possibly because of his emotional connection to Lora?).
"Oh man, this is isn't happening, I only think it's happening."
And the Grid in Legacy is more consistent because Kevin took the time to make sure his mind would be able to handle digitization better. Maybe that's why he's meditating?
Thinking some more about it, I wonder if this could mean that there's some interesting symbolism in Flynn's initial encounter with Yori, where he percieves her as having the same kind of helmet as Tron has. For those who believe that there's some attraction between Flynn and Tron, it could be seen as Flynn projecting what he finds attractive in Tron onto Yori? And later, when they kiss, he's instead percieving her more as Lora than Tron? I dunno, I haven't thought it through, just spitballing.
We Have to Make Plans
2024/03/11
First posted here on Tumblr.
If KOSA passes
Or if any other form of censorship (there are many in the works!) ever succeeds at stepping in to impede our ability to communicate online:
We have to make plans.
Now, I dunno who'll even see this post. The few followers I have are TRON fans (who despite the fantasy we live in, tend to have realistically dismal views IRL about Disney and the various corporate uses of software).
And this fandom, on average, is pretty tech-savvy. It's where I've encountered the most people under 20 years old who actually know how to use a desktop or laptop computer.
So, if there's any hope for what I'm thinking about, this is prolly a good place to start with it.
(As with all my posts, I encourage reblogging and containment-breaching.)
(Gifs are clips from TRON 1982, mainly the "deleted love scene," from the DVD extras.)
Anyway.
Current society has moved online communication much too far onto major social media sites for my comfort. Whoever you communicate with over the internet, chances are you do it through a service owned by a big company: Tumblr, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Facebook, whatever. Even TikTok (shudder).
These sites, despite their many flaws, can provide experiences that are valuable and hard to get otherwise. And once all your friends are on one site, you can't just leave and stay in touch with them all, not unless they all go the same place. It's easy to see why it's hard to abandon any social media platform.
But a backup plan is important. Because, as we've seen over and over, social media sites can't be relied on. They change their policies suddenly, without good reason-- and are inconsistent, even discriminatory, about enforcing those policies.
If they're funded by ads, the advertisers are their main customers, and your posts are the product. Their goal is that the posts most valuable to the advertisers get seen by people the advertisers consider desirable customers.
Helping you communicate-- making your posts get seen by the people you want to communicate with-- is optional to them.
Not to mention that the whole business model of an ad-funded website is generally unsustainable. Many of these sites are operating at a loss, relying on shareholders in a fragile bubble, doomed to fail soon just from lack of real profit.
And the more restrictions --like KOSA-- that the law puts on freedom of online speech, the likelier they are to go down or just become unusable. Every rule a site is required to follow is another strain on its resources, and most of them are already failing badly at even enforcing their own self-imposed rules.
If we want any control over our continued ability to stay in touch with our online friends-- we need to have a backup plan. Maybe it'll be simple at first, a bare-bones system we cobble together-- but it's gotta be something that will work. For a while at least.
There are lots of really good posts about ways to build your own website, using a service like Neocities. I VERY MUCH recommend learning this skill-- learning to make websites of the very simplest, most stable, glitch-resistant type, made of html pages-- which you can upload to a host while you store backups on your home computer. If you value the writing and art that you put online, this is probably the safest you can keep it.
But that's for making your own creative work public.
As for communicating with others-- for example, receiving and answering other people's comments on your work-- that gets more complex. I personally haven't found it worthwhile to troubleshoot the problems that come with having a system that allows visitors to comment publicly on my website.
But what we do still have-- and likely will for a long time-- is email.
Those of us who came of age before social media's current hold... well, we might take this for granted. Email was the first form of online contact we ever encountered... and thus it can seem to us like the most ordinary, the most boring.
But in the current world, it is a rare and precious thing to find a method of communicating that doesn't require everyone in the chat to be signed on with the same corporation.
Email is, as of now, still perfectly legal-- as much as social media companies have been trying to herd the populace away from it. I'm sure there are other ways to share thoughts online that are not bound by laws. But I am not going to go into that here.
Email service is provided by law-abiding companies, which will comply with subpoenas if law enforcement thinks you are emailing about doing illegal things. So, email is not a surefire way to be safe, if laws become dystopian enough to threaten your freedom to talk about your own life and identity.
But it's safer than posting on a public social media page.
For now.
Email is beautifully decentralized. You can get an email address many different ways-- some reliant on a company like Gmail, others hosted on your own domain. And different people, with all different types of email addresses, hosted in all different ways-- can all communicate together by the same method.
Of course any of these people, individually, can lose their email address for some reason or other, and have to get a new one. But as long as they still know the email addresses of their contacts, they can reconnect and recover from that loss. The structure of a group linked by email is reliant not on a single company-- but on the group itself, the friends you can actually count on.
This is why I am trying to promote the idea of forming email lists, as a backup plan to give people a way to stay in touch as mainstream social media sites prove to be unsustainable.
I'm envisioning a simple system of sending emails to several addresses at once, and making each reply visible to everyone in the chat by using "reply all" (or, if desired, editing the To field to reply to only some).
If enough people get used to using email in this way, it could fill most of the needs met by any other group chat or forum ...without depending on a centralized social media company that's taking dystopian measures to try and make the business profitable.
So here are some thoughts about how I personally imagine it could work.
(Feel free to comment and bring up any thoughts I haven't addressed, or suggestions to customize how specific groups could set it up. This is meant as more of a starting point for brainstorming than a catch-all solution.)
As I see it, here are the basics of what you and your friends would each need to start out:
An email address. Any kind, hosted anywhere. You should use a dedicated email account just for this group, one that you do NOT use for other communication. Being in this group will result in things you don't want happening to your main email address-- like getting a TON of email, one for every post and reply. Or someone could get your email address that you really don't want any contact with. Use a burner email account (one that you can easily replace) and change it if needed.
The knowledge of how to "REPLY ALL" in your email. This will be necessary in order to add a comment that everyone in the group can see.
The knowledge of how to EDIT THE "TO" FIELD in your email, and remove addresses from the list of all recipients. This will be necessary if you want to CHANGE WHICH PEOPLE in the group can see your comment.
The knowledge of how to FILTER WORDS in your email. This will be necessary if a topic comes up that you don't want to see any mentions of.
The knowledge of how to BLOCK PEOPLE in your email. This will be very important. If someone joins this email group who you do not want to interact with, it will be up to you to BLOCK them so that you do NOT see their messages. (If they are bad enough to evade the block with multiple burner accounts, that's what you have a burner account for. Change it, and share the new one only with those you trust not to give it to them.)
Every person in the group will be effectively a "moderator" of the group, able to remove people from it by cutting their email addresses out of the "To" field. Members will all have equal "moderator" privileges, each able to tailor the group to their own needs.
This means the group may naturally split, over time, into other groups, each one removing some people and adding others. Some will overlap, some won't. This is good! This is, in my opinion, what online interaction SHOULD be like! There should be MANY groups like this!
In this way, we can keep online discussion alive, no matter WHAT happens to any of the social media websites.
If the dystopia got bad enough to shut down email, we could even continue with postal mail and photocopies, like they did in the days of print-zine fanfiction.
If it looks like the dystopia is gonna come for postal mail too, we'll use the connection we have to preserve whatever contacts we can with people who live near us.
Not saying it's GONNA get that bad. But these steps of preparation are good no matter exactly what kind of bad stuff happens.
As long as some organized form of communication still exists, we'll have a place where it's at least a little safer to be your true self...
to plan events and meetups...
and maybe even activities a little too risque to make the final cut of a 1982 Disney movie.
They're trying to censor us. We want a Free System. So we're gonna fight back.
For the Users. Not the corporations.
Peace out, programs.
...Just wanna say THANK YOU ALL
for sharing and adding to this post and this discussion.
Which, to be clear, is NOT something we only need to face "if KOSA passes," but is a systemic issue that's been going on a long time already. KOSA might not pass at all... and if it does, it'll take some time to go into effect... and there are many different ways it could affect things if it does.
We can't be sure of every detail. But we know that many of the problems we worry about, with KOSA, are already problems on today's internet, and will need solutions no matter what. Probably solutions on the ground level, because lord knows authority figures can't be expected to fix this.
Case in point: the egregious transphobia that has blown up since I posted that (although it had been happening for a long time). When communication is dependent on a corporation, and CEOs of corporations behave... the way they do... we need other options.
I VERY much appreciate that people are sharing that post and adding their own ideas and resources, both alternatives and augmentations to my email-list suggestion. This is a problem that will need many different solutions, and I'm so happy that so many people are coming together to help each other.
I also want to add a few general ideas of my own. These are details that I've been considering specifically in regard to the email-list approach, although some of them may also be relevant to other solutions people have suggested.
Ideology in small groups
It seems like the most workable solution is for big social media platforms to be replaced by many smaller gatherings. One concern that comes to mind is, will this be a problem in terms of people getting trapped in echo chambers?
And, it's true, if we replace a huge online public square with a small group of chosen friends, we are going to end up exposed to fewer unfamiliar ideas.
There is some risk that the ideas within a group will begin to feel like unquestionable reality-- even if the group is distilling them into more extreme versions of themselves, and ostracizing anyone whose beliefs don't continue getting more extreme. This is how some of the most bigoted and dangerous schools of thought have formed online, and it's worth watching out for.
But at the same time, if you've formed this group because it's necessary for survival? Then you may end up more strongly motivated to reconsider the sort of thinking that can lead to a toxic echo chamber. When loyal friends are in short supply, and vitally necessary in an increasingly dystopian world, and going online to find new friends is no longer an easy thing... then you may start having to reconsider what disagreements are worth overlooking for the sake of shared goals.
It's still your own choice who you continue to associate with. No one else can make you agree on what type of conflict is a deal-breaker on a friendship, and what transgressions can and can't be tolerated or forgiven. But in a survival situation, your feelings on this may naturally shift. And that, too, is worth being aware of.
Cutting off contact.
So, if you have decided that your relationship with someone is irreparable and not worth keeping, then comes the question of how to cut ties.
One thing I mentioned earlier, in my description of how an email list could work, is that each individual person can cut ties with others in the list... by removing them from the "To" field of the emails, or by blocking them or filtering their messages through a function of their email client.
This would be a more personal, individual choice than many of us are used to, on big social media sites. You would have to be your own moderator. There is no moderator of the whole group. You cannot complain to some ultimate authority and expect them to cut this person off from everyone on the list.
...I mean, okay, that is possible in some types of small groups. And in some cases it's worth it. But it also has implications that are important to consider before you decide if it's the right approach for your group.
Once you have a hierarchy where a moderator makes decisions for the whole group on who to ban and who to keep... you have to contend with the fact that you're back to a version of the dependency that you had on the moderation teams of big social media sites.
And this can be much better with a small group, or sometimes much worse... all depending on the group and the moderator.
In a moderated forum, there is always the risk that the moderator will start making choices that the rest of the group can't tolerate, or that will split the group into angrily opposed factions... or that the moderator will simply give up and quit under the stress. (It can be hugely stressful, making decisions on what to allow and what to ban! Those can be hard decisions to make, and very hard to make in a way that the majority of the group considers fair and consistent.)
Being a smaller group usually makes it more manageable. But you're still depending on the whims of one person or a few people, whose choices can make or break the whole experience for you-- whether it's banning you for reasons you consider unfair, or refusing to ban someone else that you feel unsafe being around.
Moderation still can be worth it in some cases, though. A group where each member has to moderate their own experience will have its own complex challenges.
For instance, if you're on an email list where your only recourse for dealing with your worst enemies is to remove their names from the To field and/or block their email addresses... then you have to contend with questions like:
- If I stop sending my emails to them, and block them from sending emails to me... am I okay with them still seeing other people's replies with quoted text from me, on messages that I sent to the rest of the group?
- If I'm not okay with that, do I have to cut ties with everyone else who is not removing them from the To field and blocking their address?
- How will I keep track of all my messages and who I do and don't send them to, with the goal of avoiding these specific people?
- Will I have to break off into a whole separate email list with only certain people on it because I can't trust anyone else to completely cut off contact with my enemies?
- What if the enemies sneak in with a new burner account? What method will I use to prove it isn't them? How reliable is this method?
- Do I have to also cut contact with every friend who doesn't succeed in doing it? How much risk do I accept for the sake of not cutting off all my friends?
And again, I can't answer any of that for you. These are choices you have to make personally.
Higher Authorities
In either case-- self-moderation or relying on moderators of a small group-- you'll also have to contend with the fact that you may not be safe reporting anyone's behavior to any authority higher than the people in the group.
There will, technically, still be higher authorities. The email providers of members of the group; their internet service providers; their web hosts; the owners of any service they use for this online interaction. Even the police, who may be all too eager to get involved if you report that a group member has been doing something outright illegal.
But, if the group itself is of questionable legality --for instance, a group for freely discussing abortion or LGBTQ rights in a state where that's strictly regulated-- then involving law enforcement, or involving any service that is required to uphold the law, may put the entire group at risk.
You may rightly consider your enemy's behavior much more dangerous than the everyday discussions within your forum. But when you show proof of that dangerous behavior (in the form of, say, a threatening email CC'd to everybody)... the authority you report it to may decide to make no distinction, treating the entire group as lawbreakers and hunting them down by their email addresses.
You'll have to think about what, if any, circumstances would make that a worthwhile risk to take.
And what options you may have for handling the problem as a group, if you decide that it's not worth the risk to involve any higher authority.
Shifts in Thinking
The past several years on the internet have shown a lot of cognitive dissonance within many schools of thought.
This includes many people's inclination to believe that ethical rules are clear and simple... that gray areas and edge cases do not in fact exist and are just as clear as anything else to a reasonable and ethical person... that anyone who falls on the wrong side of ethics is unforgivable and should be permanently removed from all of society by any means necessary... and that there should still be absolute authorities carrying out all this enforcement with an iron fist, but just doing it more correctly.
This becomes evident every time someone advocates for a new law or a new policy, without giving any thought to questions like:
- How could this be interpreted besides how I interpret it?
- If someone was determined to retaliate against me specifically by accusing me of breaking this rule, what could they find to use as evidence for the accusation?
- Who would be enforcing the rule, and how?
- Do I trust them? Do I trust anyone else who might replace them?
- What, if anything, could stop this rule from being used in the worst imaginable way against people I would never, ever want it to be used against?
Or maybe people do give thought to these questions, but just not enough?
I'm very happy that people do seem to be applying this kind of analysis to some proposed laws-- like KOSA itself. That's very heartening.
But I still see an absence of this same critical thinking in many other circumstances... whenever anyone suggests a change that should be made to federal or state law, or even to what kind of posts should be allowed or not allowed on a social media platform.
It takes a bit of imagination to think it through: Could the proposed wording include things I don't want it to include? Exclude things I don't want it to exclude? Be taken in ways that get me and all my friends purged, deleted, arrested?
I have a lot of imagination. Sometimes too much to sleep easily at night.
And I have accepted that there is no perfect, or even really good, solution to all this.
But there are better options than what we have now. Not good, but better.
I don't know exactly what the best or most feasible of these options are. But I know that making it better on a societal scale is going to take a long time, and a lot of changes in how a lot of people think.
And it's possible that some of these changes in thinking might start to happen, out of necessity, in the course of making things better on the scale of small groups.
Anyway.
Thank you all, and keep up the good fight. Tron would be proud.
...I do recommend the movie. I bought a DVD secondhand on ebay, because I'm not feeding that particular mouse, but it's a gloriously weird and delightful movie that speaks to what Disney used to be willing to take chances on, back in 1982.
Still kinda wish Lisberger had been able to produce it independently as he planned, instead of pitching it there. But realistically, with the flow of ideas controlled the way it is, I probably would never have heard of it then.
The Deleted Scene, in particular, is very dear to my heart... and not just because it's such a fantastic jumping board for the dive into erotic fanfiction.
It's fascinating especially because it's not just a love scene-- it's a scene about finding safe places to talk in private, in a world of dystopian surveillance.
And using those places for not just sex, but forbidden self-expression (in the form of fashion and decorating)... and also for PLOTTING THE REVOLUTION.
....Aaand it is especially poetic that the scene got cut.
Anyway. In the spirit of all things being in danger of cutting... I'm not gonna rely on the assumption that my Tumblr page is safe. But I'm heartened by how many people have reblogged this post, so some version of it will be around even if I disappear.
In the spirit of the whole email thing, just letting you know I can be contacted (for the moment) at astercontrol at proton dot me, and (eventually, see below) at astercontrol dot com.
And I know I've said this part before, and my resolutions are hard to stick to. But my goal at the moment is still to put a lot of my focus on the website I'm making on Neocities.
It's a huge endeavor, because I am trying to combine a lot of different topics and projects in my weird complex life.
The url will be astercontrol.com. When it is ready to be publicly viewed, that placeholder page will change to the actual entry page of the site.
When that happens, you'll be able to see pages about my writing, my art, many different things I've worked on and thought about... and of course, as many resources as I can gather to help others with that same struggle of getting free from corporate-controlled communication.
Because people being able to share their thoughts openly might be the one thing that makes the biggest difference to... ALL the other problems in the world.
Without the level of free dialogue I've seen about police brutality, trans rights, Palestine, COVID, climate change, anything... I'd know only what mainstream publications felt like telling me. I'd be in no position to even realize what help was needed, let alone help in the various small ways I've been helping.
And that's where more and more people will be, the more our communication gets crushed under increasing corporate control.
My site will probably not be complete when you first see it. There will be lots of sections that still don't have any content yet. The whole project would just take far too long, and I want to open the site soon. The way social media is going, "finding alternatives" has jumped to the front of my priorities.
Fandom Changes
2024/01/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
It's been most of a year since I began my journey into TRON fandom.
In many ways it's been wonderful.
But one thing that's jarring, and painful, is how many of the people who were active at the beginning are now... gone. Either mostly or completely.
It's happened in various ways. Some have just gone quiet, or mostly quiet, on every forum where I saw them. Others have actively removed their online presence, either by deleting social media, or by blocking and unfollowing down to a smaller number of people they now interact with.
Some have made it clear why. Some have just ghosted, without explanation.
But from the variety of circumstances where I've seen it happen... it seems like there really isn't one single cause.
Many different, unrelated ones have come up, with different individuals who have vanished. IRL problems, busy jobs, mental health issues, shifts in personal interests, fandom conflict, social overwhelm, a desire to separate themselves from places and people whom they associate with experiences they no longer want any reminders of.
But regardless of causes, it's a loss that's felt very sharply in such a small fandom, especially for someone like me whose interest focuses on a particularly small part of the fandom.
And since this is the first time in many, many years that I've been active in the social part of any fandom... I really have no reference point for how normal it is.
It feels very unlike my long-ago experience with Star Trek fans... but is that difference because TRON is a smaller fandom than Trek, or because of some difference in fandom culture, or because the whole world has changed in the long gap in time between my experience with the two?
It's a very lonely feeling, in any case.
I miss lots of the fans I started this experience with. I accept their individual circumstances, even when I don't totally understand.
But I also really, really appreciate all of you who are still around. And I am so very happy whenever I've made contact with someone new.
You all matter.
...Oh...
it's just occurring to me that maybe some of these suddenly disappearing fans are fleeing in fear of the new movie coming out
as someone who already mostly ignores post-1982 canon, please let me assure you we can happily ignore the new movie together and still be a fandom (pleading look)
TITLE
2024/00/00
First posted here on Tumblr.
Anonymous asked: But TRON 2.0 is still cool right? Heck yeah, from what I've seen so far it's got a lot of what I liked about 82 (haven't seen everything about it yet, there is a LOT of playthrough video to watch, but it feels like very much my kinda thing (And I'm not gonna shame or judge anyone for liking any of the other canon either, hey there's things I find cool about all of it! I just hope there aren't gonna be too many fans throwing away everything they like about the fandom because of something new they don't like.) tron tronblr tron 1982 tr3n tron 3 electric buggery UserWorldProblems 4 notes Jan 20th, 2024
Abs
2024/01/21
First posted here on Tumblr.
"he would not fucking say that" but you ever be looking at fanart and suddenly its "he would not fucking have abs"
astercontrol
...ok so prev has Alan Bradley in the notes and this got me thinking
because at first glance, he is one of the characters that we'd probably most easily think of as having a superhero-muscled kind of build
because even though we never see him in very revealing clothes...
he's got the body that Tron is a mirror of, and we think of Tron as basically a superhero type of character
(and yeah there's whole speculative essays on whether a program's shape is an exact copy of the programmer's shape or like an ideal of what they wish they looked like, but that's a whole other thing)
but then
you actually look at Tron's build and
...he's just a sorta skinny, sorta soft guy
strong, yes. good muscles. but they're under a bit of softness
the strongest people have some softness over the muscles. even if they're thin!
like...
who actually has "abs." the chiseled bodybuilder ones I mean
those don't exist
TITLE
2024/01/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
Anonymous asked:
So... everything tron past 2003 isn't canon then.
all of Tron everywhere is exactly as canon as you want it to be
fiction is fiction, and none of it is less fiction than the rest
the tron 1982 movie is canon, all of it, including the parts that contradict each other.
the novelization of 82 is also canon despite the parts that contradict the movie.
this might be because human minds cannot comprehend the digital world without perceiving it as ever-changing, like a dream. or it might be because someone made all this up.
the prologue to Betrayal is sorta-canon but it is narrated by a version of Dumont whose memories have gone all screwy for some reason
i have written fanfic that I consider tenuously canon-compliant with Legacy while being set in the Encom system and mostly unconnected to anything going on in Flynn's grid. this fanfic is among the things that are canon to me.
Kesomon's Ram Expanded series on Ao3 is also canon to me even though it directly conflicts with the events of my own fanfiction about Ram which is equally canon.
this is not a thing I can or will explain.
Sugar
2024/01/20
First posted here on Tumblr.
I think
If a program just got lasered into the User world, with no experience of drinking or eating User food
(only drinking the system's "liquid energy" and otherwise getting charged on the system's power)
that program would have the most fuckin voracious sweet tooth
Oh you get all your energy through your mouth? Okay so how do you turn this stuff into power? Lemme research what's in it... Holy hack this is complicated
Ok but this sugar stuff? glucose, etc... this is what converts to energy most directly for you, right
This is your way of consuming energy. Ok good to know
ALL the candy in the house. ALL the syrup, yes just the syrup don't bother with the pancakes
I'm supposed to charge myself on about 2000 "calories" of your energy daily. Got it. Buying this extra large milkshake and I'll be good for the day... AAAAA. Why does my body feel so bad later. I GOT ENOUGH POWER
Energy drink? Yes please -- OH HOLY GLITCHING GRIDBUGS THIS IS NOT ENERGY. it is... power-intensive malware that makes you use up all your energy faster and then crash??? Mixed with something that TRICKS you into feeling like you're getting sugar but you're not?? I WILL DEREZZ WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THIS
incorrect quotes
2024/01/29
First posted here on Tumblr.
kevin: yeah just send in your TRON program, it'll sneak up on the MCP and sabotage---
alan: it's not a virus, dude
kevin: it could be! you can't spell TROJAN without TRON
alan: first of all-- you cannot spell all of "Trojan" with just TRON either
kevin: i assumed that was what the "JA" was for
Tags: tron ja 307020, tron, tronblr, tron 1982, kevin flynn, alan bradley, if you google tron ja you will not learn the number from that, you will get autocompleted with -red leto which i am unhappy about
TITLE
2024/00/00
First posted here on Tumblr.
Name of Ram
2024/01/23
First posted here on Tumblr.
This seems like a weirdly obvious thought (especially for an obsessed Ram fan like me) but I realized I haven't actually seen it addressed.
Has anyone done any speculation on an in- universe backstory for how Ram got his name?
It's usually explained as meaning "Random Access Memory," but... that is not what Ram is. He's an actuarial calculator. Why would you name that after random access memory?
What possible connection?
Does running him use an unusually large amount of RAM? (Is that a reason to choose that name? Does any other software get named like that?)
Is it an abbreviation for something else completely, like "Roy's Actuarial Module" or "Risk Assessment Mathematics"?
Is he named after the Los Angeles Rams? (Oh dammit is Roy a football fan? "No really I'm a nerd, I only go to the Super Bowl parties for the free popcorn, I swear")
Is it a name he got in-system, for being the most "randomly accessible" twink in that whole prison compound.... (obviously no, because the Legacy short indicates his name is known in the User world, shut up Aster)
...any other thoughts?
...update.
day 9 of Solitary Covid Confinement and it is 3:33 a.m.
currently cross-referencing my analysis of Ram and his name with
- the assertion that the spiritual elements in TRON (1982) draw from both Brahman and ancient Greek inspiration
- Ram/Aries/Ares as a Greek god of war
- Ram/Rama/Ramachandra as a Hindu avatar of Vishnu
- WHY IN THE POSITIVE, NEGATIVE AND ABSOLUTE FUCK AM I NOT ASLEeeEeeeEP
TITLE
2024/00/00
First posted here on Tumblr.
Latest news from the Asterbrain Pattern-Recognizer: How a butt joke led to a religious analysis of the whole TRON 1982 cast.
2024/01/30
First posted here on Tumblr.
Latest news from the Asterbrain Pattern-Recognizer: How a butt joke led to a religious analysis of the whole TRON 1982 cast.
So, today, for... strange and mysterious Aster-specific reasons... I was looking for a character who could be written as Catholic.
And because Tron is always on my brain, I went straight for those characters.
Now, though I was technically raised Roman Catholic, my own family's faith and customs were pretty secular, and I certainly never developed any notion that I could know other Catholics on sight.
And, while TRON leans heavily into religious themes from the Program viewpoint, the Users don't say or do much that would indicate their own religion. All I can think of, offhand, is a few references to Christmas-- so brief and vague that they might not even be enough to imply anyone being Christian.
So, we might just have to go by character names... and the associations that an audience familiar with stereotypes and archetypes would have with them.
Alan Bradley: Both given name and surname seem to be British in origin; could be coded as Anglican or Methodist or some other form of Protestant, but in the absence of other clues I don't think viewers would give much thought to his religion or his ethnic background. He's basically designed to look like 1980's American audiences' idea of the most normal, standard everyday guy.
Lora Baines: Probably also of British origin, though that spelling of the first name is uncommon. Like Alan, there might be some vague assumption of Protestantism, but not a whole lot of thought given to it.
Walter Gibbs: Last name, again, seems to come from England, and the actor's accent sounds to me like maybe it's attempting to be British... but that might just be how older Hollywood actors had been trained to talk, back then. I hear similar voices in old movies a LOT. Again I'm not sure audiences would immediately think anything about his religion (although his line about programs and their "spirits" ties very closely into the... animism of the whole digital-world side of things).
(Wow, so far lots of names from England, and lots of reinforcement of the idea that those names are so default as to go unnoticed. Probably says something about society, and/or about me and my viewpoint on it. ...Moving on.)
Ed Dillinger: that surname seems to have originated separately in both Germany and England; going by his accent it's clearly England, so audiences would probably guess Anglican. (If they thought anything about that name at all beyond the 1930's gangster connotation.)
Roy Kleinberg: very unambiguously Jewish name, thank you Legacy and The Next Day! (as of 1982 we only knew him as Popcorn Coworker, which could have been anything, since there is, to my knowledge, no religion with dietary restrictions against popcorn.)
Kevin Flynn: ...okay! this is the most Irish name I have seen in a long time! We may have our Catholic-coded character, folks. (Although he might be primarily "luck of the Irish" coded, LOL.)
(they found him under the rainbow, like a leprechaun on his pot of gold)
And, completing this analysis, I've found that it felt much more worthwhile than the joke I had in mind when I started.
Truly, the journey outweighs the destination here.
Yes, my idea did require a Catholic and someone else unfamiliar with Catholicism--- the joke itself remaining agnostic on which of them, exactly, was being made fun of.
But it was such a silly, throwaway joke that could have been a two-line shitpost, and certainly did not NEED to be about Tron characters.
My mind, though, will go off on whatever tangents it wishes.
....the butt joke, in case you wanted it:
"So, you Catholics only listen to the Pope when he is... talking out of his ass?"
"His seat, man. Cathedra means seat."
GOOD POPPED STUFF
2024/01/29
First posted here on Tumblr.
OH YEAH
I am out of quarantine and roomies brought home THE GOOD STUFF
Roy Kleinberg HEAVEN
CAN I HAVEALLSOME OF YOUR POPCORN
RAM FLAVOR
Subtlety
2024/01/10
First posted here on Tumblr.
One more thing I love about the 1982 TRON movie (yes, yet another thing!) is how subtle some details are.
This is, of course, in addition to all the parts that feel genuinely unfinished and not-well-thought-out, or are unintended side effects of some technicality in filming. I mean, I love those parts too! I love trying to figure out exactly where in between scenes Flynn could have asked Ram about Tron, since we see Ram claiming he did, even though he clearly didn't during either of the two times he was in the cell with Ram (because the part where he did ask him was cut from the script)...
...I love theorizing about the program Sark defeated in the lightcycle battle of the first scene, and whether he really reappears as a warrior-elite lightcyclist in the scene where Flynn breaks out of the game grid? (The same actor seems to reappear, probably because of limited cast. But, in-universe, does that mean he's a different program by the same User? Or did Sark spare his life on the condition that he'd defect to the MCP?)...
... And I love trying to come up with a reason why blue is the Bad-Guy color for lightcycles, despite being the Good-Guy color for armor circuitry (the out-of-universe reason is they decided on Blue=Good after all the computer animation on the lightcycles was done already, but... couldn't there be a reason within the story as well?)
My pattern-recognition-program brain loves all of that-- to me it's just a bunch of neat puzzles to solve!
And in addition to those accidental puzzles, there are also plenty of details that clearly had thought put into them, but in return also require some thought from the viewer.
Ram's User is one example of that. Even though he's just credited as "Popcorn Coworker" at that point, it must have been intentional that he's played by the same actor as Ram and is also cubicle neighbors with Alan, in a "mirroring" of their programs being cellmates. But in the original movie, this goes by in a brief, easily-missed scene, and wasn't made any clearer until Legacy and The Next Day came out. Audiences in the '80s could have figured it out, paying enough attention, but it'd take effort.
There are plenty of other examples of stuff like this, many of them just in the props and scenery-- Alan's "Gort Klaatu Barada Nikto" cubicle sign; Yori's name appearing on the monitor when the laser activates, and so on.
And the Bit thinking that Flynn is its program, with the reason implied by the unspoken fact that Clu was its program and they look the same. The scene of Flynn absorbing circuit-color from a guard, clearly without meaning to or understanding how it works-- but it makes perfect sense when you realize he probably intended to steal a uniform for disguise, and his User-Power acted on his intent to disguise himself and simply transferred the red color to him. It's a beautiful goldmine of puzzles!
And then... then there are the social subtleties; the puzzles of emotion and intention, half-concealed within the acting.
Now, as someone who's spent a lot of my life struggling with social challenges and unspoken, unclear social rules, that sort of subtlety is... not always my friend.
But, in a movie like this... a beautifully complex film that's already such a wealth of half-hidden mysteries... I can, on occasion, enjoy the emotional subtlety, seeing it as just another puzzle to figure out.
There are so many cases of a character expressing something, on the surface, that may not be quite what he's feeling deep down. For instance...
Flynn and Lora are amicable exes, seeming to harbor no resentment about their breakup. When Lora brings her new guy, Alan, to visit Flynn at the arcade, Flynn is all laughs and smiles, showing nothing but happiness...
And yet, later, we see that laughs and smiles from Flynn don't always mean happiness.
After seeing him use a cheerful face to cover up whatever anger, fear and despair he must be feeling about Dillinger and the MCP, we start to wonder... how many of the darker feelings about his past with Lora might be covered up in the same way?
Tron, too, is a master of repression. Honestly, sometimes I think he took the directive "Secure and Protect the System, Stop Bad Things from getting through the Walls!" and applied it disproportionately to the walls of his own dingus self.
Look at him speedrun a dozen stages of bottling-up-the-grief, upon learning that Ram didn't survive:
And then, look how calm and cheerful he seems to be, when faced with the potentially faith-shattering revelation that the gods don't know WTF they're doing.
Now, I personally think this isn't a case of emotional repression; it's a case of "Tron does not actually believe that for a second." He is not, at this point, at all convinced that Flynn really is a User.
His choice to say "Stranger and stranger!" instead of "Bullshit!" is the only repression here, and, in my opinion, it's an act of diplomacy on Tron's part. Tron knows that whoever this guy is, he's gonna have to keep working together with him for at least a while, so he decided not to start any unnecessary conflicts over whether he believes the User thing.
Here's another subtlety, at the end, when Tron and Yori are reunited.
Now, I don't mean Yori's explanation of what happened to Flynn, which is unusually non-subtle here. With so many details of the film's plot so expertly revealed through Showing rather than Telling, it's a surprise to see Yori explain in such clear detail just what Flynn did, and just how it helped Tron defeat the MCP... when we, as the audience, already saw all that happen, and could figure it out as well as we could figure out any of the other, more subtle bits of the plot that aren't outright explained to us.
No, the subtlety here is in Tron's reaction. He's happy to see Yori, yes-- but when she starts talking about how great Flynn was, he gets a stone-faced, tight-jawed look to him, like he's... really not all that happy to see his partner fangirling so hard over that doofus.
He looks like he might be giving some very critical thought to just where Yori might've learned that "kissing" thing she just taught him, and struggling with some... complicated feelings about that.
Really I think there is lots of evidence that the Programs (Tron, Yori and Ram) all have complicated feelings about Flynn. To me it seems clear that even when they don't realize he's a User, all three feel the pull of his User-power, perhaps to the point of overwhelming their better judgment.
All three have scenes where they seem irresistibly attracted to him. Though of course Yori's the only one who actually went through with the kiss that... all three of them seemed to be gearing up for.
But just because Tron understands what it feels like to lose control a little, getting swept away in the attraction of a User's energy...
well, that doesn't mean he's happy about it happening to Yori.
Personally I don't see it as jealousy, in the traditional monogamous User-world sense. I see it as more of:
"you do realize that guy is kind of a dumpster fire of a person, even if he is a User? I know what his energy does to you, I felt it too, and that is why I'm... concerned. He has God Powers, but by his own admission he does not really have a clue what he's even doing with them, so... well, I don't know if he's gonna come back here again, but if he does, please please be careful around him, okay?"
I swear. This movie has infinite subtext to explore. I am gonna keep finding things for YEARS.
Oh! The kissing thing, also, has an element of subtlety to it.
We are never explicitly TOLD that kissing didn't exist between Programs until Flynn introduced it.
But we readily accept it as canon, because of the combination of
1. Tron's surprised-and-delighted reaction to Yori's kiss:
and
2. the almost-kisses that kept happening before Yori learned to do that (and I'm not just talking about the ones between Flynn and his dudes-being-bros)...
My headcanon (I've written fanfic on this, so sorry if this is old-infodump, but I love this headcanon) ...is that there was something screwed-up with permissions in the System until Flynn helped fix it.
Kissing didn't occur to anyone until Flynn showed up-- but that was just because the permissions on it were blocked.
And, out of all the programs, Yori (the laser-program, whose job involves being aware of the Veil Between Worlds) had the clearest sense that something was up with that.
It ended up taking the combination of Yori and Flynn's awareness to identify and fix the problem.
Reply from coupleofdays:
"Hey, Flynn?"
"Yeah, Alan?"
"What's with this latest patch note on the ENCOM system?"
"What patch note do you mean?"
"The one that says 'kissing is now allowed'?"
"Well, ah... all I can say is that I took the time to make a little bugfix while we were breaking in last week."
Reply from astercontrol:
HAHAAAA
it just occurred to me that this is the all-time most original (and most meta) take on the Disney "spell is broken with a kiss" what spell was broken with a kiss? THE NO KISSING SPELL this was not even outdone by EVE's electric spark kiss serving as defibrillator resuscitation for WALL-E
TITLE
2024/01/25
First posted here on Tumblr.
So there are scenes in the 1982 movie and its novelization that pretty explicitly show that video games have a Player and a Computer side, and that both are enacted by program warriors
The degree to which the Player's skill influences the Program's success or failure is never completely clear, but still...
any time I think about going into an arcade and trying out an actual TRON game, there is a part of me that goes...
"...what kind of monster are you. None of those poor programs want to fight for THAT kind of User! YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED A DAMN VIDEOGAME IN YOUR LIFE. how horribly and needlessly are you trying to get your little friends derezzed?"
tangentially: I have an idea in the back of my mind about a plucky little User-believer who, despite all threats and torture, never stops heckling the MCP by calling it "the NPC"
"THAT IS NOT MY DESIGNATION, PROGRAM"
"...oh yeah?? Have you ever dared to let yourself be the player character?"
".....NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS"
Shades of MCP Red (or: PMS, the Power Management System)
2024/00/00
First posted here on Tumblr.
Just had a chat between friends where we concluded that:
1. software updates are the Program equivalent of getting your period.
2. (buggy updates are like a real bad endometriosis period)
3. this means all programs get it, so Yori not only has to deal with her own period, she also has to comfort Tron when he's on his
4. Yori is good at comforting. that gesture she does to Flynn on the solar sailer, with hands on his face, is a way of sharing/stabilizing energy
5. MCP would similarly try and comfort Sark, EXCEPT that MCP is pretty much ALWAYS on his period and having the worst one ever
6. This is 100% his fault because he is always dissecting and devouring other programs and thus keeps himself in a constant state of "updating"
7. the conversation ended when I said "it's so much better for programs who have light cycles" and I don't think I will ever again have a whole conversation set up a joke for me so perfectly
(The conversation should be over, but my brain of course is still making connections, and would like to add:
There were no updates happening to programs in the cells, because they were cut off from communication with their Users. This is not a good thing. It's equivalent to how being particularly neglected and starved can cause your cycle to stop.)
There is probably also an analogue to periods stopping during pregnancy, even if programs don't actually do anything equivalent to pregnancy. At least, when a program is working on a big demanding task of any kind, you do not want to update the program right in the middle of that.)
Reply from coupleofdays:
A new piece of software can get updated pretty often to fix bugs in the initial release, but after having been around for many years and being considered "stable", updates are rarer, and usually just minor tweaks. An analogy for puberty and menopause?
just saying hello
2024/01/01
First posted here on Tumblr.
I just had the most cursed idea for a Tron OC
a program that was imported to the Encom system, for reasons unknown
because of.... whatever spiritual magic goes on in the System.... she is sentient like any other program there, plenty of thoughts and feelings and so on
but she is a "Hello World" program
her function, her *entire programmed purpose* is to go around saying "hello world"
she is the most annoying program ever
i love her
....can't stop thinking about this now
poor little hello world programs
...I imagine many of them are like children in appearance and personality (having been written by budding programmers at a young age)
and most of them get abandoned by their Users for so very very very long (if not forever)
do they stare longingly at the I/O towers they haven't been invited to in cycles
do they say "hello world" to other programs all the time like it's their catchphrase, just because it's the next best thing to actually getting to fulfill their purpose
Bit
2024/01/08
First posted here on Tumblr.
Ever think about how amazing it is that we got a character like the Bit in TRON 1982?
I mean, yeah, having some cute little robot or animal side characters was, and still is, very typical of movies in that genre.
But, look at the Bit.
It's based on a computer science concept, of course: the simplest unit of data in a computer, a single 1 or 0 indicating yes or no. And it's anthropomorphized just enough to get actual computer nerds confused about what exactly it is supposed to be. Clearly you'd need lots more than one bit, to create a programmed entity that behaved the way a Bit does!
Is it the mystical energy of Programmer Spirits that animates it beyond what should be possible-- as it does for the Programs themselves, who also aren't nearly complex enough to be alive on their own? Or is a Bit something else, like an external subroutine of a program, which is called a Bit simply because of the way it communicates?
Who knows? Who cares? It's a Bit! It's adorable!
And yet... this same level of anthropomorphizing is very unusual for Disney, and for the whole genre, in a whole different way.
Though it's much more animate than one could reasonably imagine for an actual bit... the Bit is much less anthropomorphic than any creature playing any comparable role in any comparable movie I can think of.
It has no eyes, no mouth, no words except a synthesized Yes and No. It expresses itself only by shifting appearance between three faceless geometric shapes.
And yes, we love it! Yes, we adore the heck out of that sassy little thing! Yes, we will absolutely look at this object that resembles no person or animal in existence, and we will find enough cuteness to scream over!
We are the weird nerdy audience that you sucked in with the promise of a movie about computer programs being alive, and YES we are invested enough to take this ALL the way!
But I haven't seen any other movie do this, ever since.
And even the original Tron movie wasn't GOING to do it, at first.
Now, every other time I've looked at the early development of ideas in a movie, I've seen a pattern of "Less Relatable being reworked into More Relatable." Any creature design that looks "too weird," "too unfamiliar," "too alien," will evolve over the course of edits, until it satisfies the developers' expectations for being something audiences can relate to.
In other words... looking at the early concept art and the final product, I am certain any other movie I can think of would've adapted the Bit in the exact opposite direction.
Same with the MCP.
Whether it's a villain or an adorable little sidekick, the fans who became captivated by the classic Tron movie are an audience eager and ready to see life and personality in something utterly alien, something that resembles no actual life in the world we know.
And yet, I'm sure this wasn't even the goal of any of the character designers.
When you look at the early design of the Programs, you see them follow a more typical pattern, starting out more robotic, less humanoid, less "Relatable," and progressing toward recognizable humanity.
That movie, I'm pretty sure, was an exception to the rule not because of any philosophy about what would resonate with audiences... but simply because of the constraints of the medium.
The Bit and the MCP became more simple, more geometric, because that was easier to computer-animate.
Programs became more humanoid because that was easier for human actors to play.
A big, huge chunk of what made this movie relatable in a gloriously weird way, to gloriously weird audiences who may have had serious trouble relating to lots of other media, is just a serendipitous side-effect of the wild experiment that it was.
...I wish movies would take risks like that more often.
Really.
Screens
2024/01/21
First posted here on Tumblr.
So remember when I was going on about the Tron 1982 Laserdisc extras, and the early storyboard art...
And one of the images was of programs in a cell, watching televised matches between other programs who were currently being forced to fight in the Games?
I find this a kinda fascinating idea, though we never saw it in the final cut of the film.
We do, however, see a possible means of doing it.
These scenes of Ram and Crom, in the first scene that shows the interior of the pit cell.
...Just what is that screen in the background?
What is it for?
Why is it just plain black, showing occasional flashing text in red?
What is the text? What could it mean?...
Does that device get used to show other things, sometimes?
It's interesting that it seems to go kinda wild, in response to the arrival of Flynn...
...although sometimes it just seems to stall around him (perhaps when his own processes are stalling a little?)
My DVD doesn't have high enough resolution to give me a clear view of the red messages on that screen.
I'm sure other people have analyzed this much better than I can (I've tried to look, but search engines are unreliable these days)
This is the clearest I can get...
My own brain's pattern recognition functions are a bit chaotic as well...
The only one that sets them off much at all is... weirdly... that last one?
In the most unexpected sort of way possible.
because all I can think of is, "it looks like someone tried to command the screen to print ‘Mayertis'... but it ended up backward and with gaps"
...my pattern recognition brain is clearly not in canon-land, but is instead referencing a dataset of headcanons it trained on while writing OC fanfic for @mayertis-not-a-user
maybe, however, this will feature in a fic someday.
anon ask
2024/01/22
First posted here on Tumblr.
Anonymous asked:
I legitimately wonder who the target audience for TR3N is even supposed to be. It's clear the Tron franchise doesn't have much in the way of mainstream appeal. And none of the actors or narrative elements of the previous films are going to be featured. So, why is Disney bankrolling this thing? Did they just get sick of Leto pestering them and finally agreed to green light the film just to shut him up?
astercontrol answered:
Yeah all of this. I honestly don't know.
I have long ago given up on trying to understand the choices of any large system of human actions (corporation, government, religion, political party, but ESPECIALLY corporation) as if it were a rational entity making choices like a person.
many batshit conspiracy theories stem from sheer desperation to understand just WHY these conglomerate entities choose to do things that, as far as we can see... benefit almost nobody... and don't even benefit the group as a whole, in the long term
but I think their choices are better understood as chaotic clusters of individual choices within them.
a scattered handful of individuals, in a few scattered, momentary, significant positions of power to make choices, each individually make the choice that benefits... them, personally.
their choices add up to... the Entity, as a whole, taking a direction that looks like... utter nonsense, from every perspective imaginable.
It's as if each cell in your body suddenly shifted to the course of action that... could lead to the longest lifespan for it, as an individual cell
many cells would outlive their individual life expectancy, by days or hours or minutes.
But the body as a whole, and every cell in it eventually, would die far too soon
and no one would ask why the body chose to do this. Because, clearly, it had no choice.
...that was much more serious analysis than you probably wanted. But it is 3 am and I have been in solitary covid confinement for a week and my filters for what I will post online are thinning dangerously, like a veil between this and some even more horrible world
tl;dr the actions of large groups of humans are chaos. but especially those who make up something like fucking Disney
reply from teh-kittykat:
Dumb conspiracy theory: they're gonna pull a Warner Brothers and bin it for tax reasons.
astercontrol
Uggh. ...yeah, plausible. Makes about as much sense as anything else they do.
I'm so tired.
(going back to fanfic and pretending Disney and this whole project just doesn't exist)
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