its-arson-time:

favorite character from any media BUT it has to be a woman. in the tags now go (pls talk to me about your favorite fictional women pls pls pls pls)

Yori / Lora

the rare case where a female Disney character is actually good representation not just “for Disney” but really pretty good in general for the time

I mean yeah they still had to make her thin and white and young and conventionally attractive and a man’s love interest. But after those constraints (to obey the 1980’s version of the Disney Hays Code or whatever I don’t even know) she broke the mold in all sorts of ways

- Lora: is a scientist and programmer. Just casually making world-shattering breakthroughs in matter digitization when Alan walks in to tell her about the shutdown. (Incidentally invented the technology that is the whole reason Flynn got to have his adventure.)

-Is the brains of the whole break-in operation to get Flynn and Alan in to hack the Encom system and deactivate the MCP.

- (Yori, the program she wrote, is an expert in using the tech within the computer system, including illegal techniques. she’s the brains of the whole plan for how Tron gets to the I/O Tower to contact Alan, and then how he gets to the MCP so he can fight him)

-Kicks the whole cliched love-interest subplot in the face and stomps on it. Flynn is ostensibly the main character and the one we’re supposed to find relatable. He does not get the girl. Lora is his ex, and current partner of Alan, the most unrelatable ultra-nerd the audience could imagine. (Lora’s so much more than a girl to be gotten, BUT even in that framework, the girl dumped the relatable-dude main character for the geek before the movie even started. Win.)

-also stomps on the expectations of drama between exes. She’s still friends with Flynn. She gets her new guy to help with the crazy plan that’s gonna improve all their lives but require cooperation between both guys. With her help, the two get friendly surprisingly fast. By the end of the movie it feels VERY MUCH like they’re all headed to polycule-land.

-Yori also seems interested in such. She and Tron (Alan’s program) are also in an established relationship at the start, though they don’t kiss (because kissing seems to be a thing unknown in the program world). However, she does try out kissing with Flynn before he leaves, and the whole feel of it gives me an impression of “I am a scientist learning new techniques to use in my current life and interactions!” (She tries it out immediately on Tron after Flynn leaves. Both are delighted with the results.)

- if you count the Deleted Love Scene, there’s several more layers added to Yori as a character. Which I could go on about forever. Damn.

- basically. In a time when lots of the most popular female characters consisted of either “looks pretty and kisses a guy” or “looks pretty and kicks ass in literal fights to show off her body in sexy-but-impractical fighting gear, and then kisses a guy,” Lora and Yori were both something else, and so was their interaction with the whole rest of the story.

- of course she didn’t get to have as big a role as she should have. And of course she was cut entirely from all subsequent Tron media. We can only have so much of any nice thing.

- ALAS POOR YORI. we knew her well