So armor lights right? We can assume that they are essentially clothes, because people are shown putting on & taking off various pieces of clothing. Sam is given his suit by the sirens in the armory, as well as an identity disc, but his markings seem to be entirely unique to him, not a stock standard piece of armor. Additionally, obviously important characters like Quorra, Tron & CLU have entirely unique suites, which leads me to think that perhaps they form based on the person wearing them? Similar to how an identity disc becomes connected to the person wearing it. Perhaps some of it acts like clothes, but in reality it’s more like…wearable code? Does that mean the suites can be taken off? Do programs have a body? I would assume so, considering Quorra has skin under her sleeves.
So, this has got me considering if programs can be sexual. In my opinion the Legacy grid does indeed have ‘nudity’, even if program bodies don’t look exactly like human ones, but what would the point of that be? We see in the End of Line club that several CLU affiliated programs are being seduced by what I can only assume are other club goers, or programs explicitly made for that purpose. Clearly romance & intimacy exist in the Legacy system. But I would assume sex doesn’t lead to children? We never see any children, & programs are made, not born. I would assume intimacy represents a function of some sort that the program is completing, or it could be a form of leisure, since we know purely entertainment based things exist in the Grid.
Yeah I would agree that in the Legacy Grid it’s purely for entertainment. Flynn seems to have created that world primarily with pleasure and entertainment in mind. And Flynn would definitely have built human-like intimacy into that world, because that’s an important thing to him as a human.
In the Encom world, which is different because it just formed spontaneously for whatever reason– I think sexual and romantic intimacy was a combination of things.
1. An echo of things from the User world. In the same way that program bodies look and sound and feel like their Users, program activities also ended up looking and sounding and feeling like things their Users do– even if there’s no reason they have to.
2. Sex drives still have a purpose, but it is not the same. None of the Encom programs seem to use sex for creating child-processes. If there’s any hint of what those drives are for, I’d say it’s in that very sexualized energy of how everything looks in the I/O Tower ritual.
I have a bunch of my own writing about this, but the gist of my headcanon is– a program’s sex drive is primarily a drive to connect with their User.
And like a human sex drive– which exists for reproductive reasons, but can get satisfied in many non-reproductive ways– Program sex drives can be a big recreational part of their intimacy with each other, as well.
The actual acts, and how they look and feel, can vary. But in general it’s more of just an approximation of how human bodies come together, and it’s mostly about sharing energy and information. (Like sex, it can have all the usual benefits like relieving stress and strengthening interpersonal bonds.)
This is super interesting- the idea that intimacy in Tron is about sharing information. I really enjoy that I think, it seems like it would be a really cool thing to go through with someone, like how Na’vi mate in Avatar. I imagine maybe you experience what your partner is feeling, maybe some part of their mind or memory. Really cool idea.
I don’t think programs would literally physically have sex like humans do, just because I don’t think that makes a lot of sense (I imagine them kinda like Barbie dolls under their suites), but I think they could definitely find bodies attractive. I talked before about how sirens were likely made for users’ enjoyment since they’re all attractive people, but since programs also have intimacy, maybe they also find things like that attractive, just…differently. Like I imagine they would have different standards. Maybe they find…energy attractive? Some sort of aura?
Yeah, when I fantasize and write about the erotic adventures of programs I imagine them doing a variety of different things, but yeah it’s definitely all non-penetrative, in my mind.
….And yeah, energy sharing and telepathy (data transfer) is a big and very fun part of it.
(I mean, that is my own interpretation and what appeals to me personally, but I do feel it makes sense.)
And I agree there’s definitely whole different layers to program attraction – including things only they can perceive about each other, in the form of energy and data.
Which I think makes the whole concept of sexual orientation very different from anything humans would recognize! Male and female don’t mean much of the same thing to programs that they mean to us.
Like, I imagine the energy and data under the surface is probably more important in attraction than the outer appearance (which is changeable anyway!) ….and some of that whole aura is somewhat analogous to human gender identity but not all of it translates…
(I’ve talked before about how I think of Ram as pretty much a gay guy, but then I clarified how that concept is a human approximation of what he actually probably is, and then I went into like 8 paragraphs of what exactly I think it means to him as a program, so yeah I definitely overthink these things, lol)
