Some complex thoughts about OCs in fanfic
So… I recently finished and posted a story in 3 parts, about Ram and Tron and Yori going out to a club together and having a threesome.
(because I love them and want them all happy, ok)
and… I was exploring a bunch of things in this story.
including:
Tron and Ram and Yori, a study of them as characters, their pasts, their motivations, their relationships (love ‘em, ok, want to study every detail of them & their love)
Details of things in that world– identity discs, the different ways programs charge on energy, what sorts of control the MCP exerted and how stuff changed when that control went away (I love the world, wanna figure out answers to all my questions bout how it works)
And, finally… other programs, other characters and how they fit in with the Main Three that I’m writing about.
So this involved me getting creative, both with worldbuilding, and with populating that world.
This called for some background OCs.
First I had Ram and Tron and Yori enter the club and take in the scene, the crowd of strangers. Overview of what this looked like; brief descriptions of these background extras and what they were doing.
And then they get to their table and sit down, and Yori starts making conversation with some programs at the next table– who she knows from work, in the laser bay.
These include Voca, a text-to-speech program who works as an announcer… Mag and Iox who work with Yori on the laser… and Rollo_3.77 who’s the record-keeping software in the laser bay.
So right from the start I’ve populated this whole setting with a bunch of characters I straight-up invented.
Except… I didn’t.
Not even the extras in the crowd. One of them, at least, I described very recognizably as The Bead-Curtain Program, canonically encountered in the hallway while Tron and Yori were on their way to the Tower:
As for Voca… of course there’s an automated voice making announcements in the laser bay! We heard her!
And yeah, one interpretation is that this is a live announcer, or some human who pre-recorded a bunch of announcements that play automatically at the proper times. The voice is too lifelike to be a typical synthesized computer voice in the 80’s.
BUT, we know Encom had a bunch of technology far more advanced than what was publicly known in the 80’s (MCP? this laser bay itself?) So, why not an unusually advanced text-to-speech program as well?
(She’s got a pretty distinctive voice too; almost mistakable for The Majel-Barret-Voice Computer in Star Trek TNG. One thing that really suggests to me that she’s a program: I’m pretty sure she’s also the same voice who called out for “Program Aloo” in the Solar Sailer Dock.)
In my story, Voca the text-to-speech program is the main speaking character of the table that Yori’s chatting with. But her companions Mag and Iox are also inspired by a scene from the laser bay:
Two programs’ names are known to appear on the screen when the orange gets digitized. Yori, of course, in the lower right corner. And MCP, in the upper left.
It’s entirely possible that the additional text above MCP is just indicating the orange is “magnified ten times.”
But I can do whatever I want forever, so I decided it’s the names of two other programs that work in the laser bay.
Now, as for Rollo_3.77.
I described him only as a program in warrior armor, introduced as the record-keeping software from the laser bay. He’s quiet, seeming stiff and uncomfortable, especially when Yori mentions Ram’s heroically strong resistance to the MCP’s conversion tactics.
You’d only guess who he is from my other story.
The one about RedGuard_3.77. About the despair that wore down his User-belief until he caved, about his rectification into an elite red warrior… and his life-changing experience with Tron and Flynn, and how it finally drove him to question his loyalty to the MCP and take one final act of passive rebellion that might just have helped turn the tide in the favor of the good guys.
Of course he’s having trouble adapting to being a blue-circuited record-keeping program again.
(With how hard he struggled to write a report for the MCP in that other story, I thought it would be kind of cruelly fitting to imagine him designed for laser-bay record-keeping. His name comes from Rolodex.)
So… this is my long-winded messy way of saying– there’s so many gradients between “canon character” and “totally made-up OC.” Have fun. Explore all of them.
stories referenced: