On Program love
Most of my posts about Tron headcanons on here are play-by-play, often screenshot-illustrated analysis of why a certain interpretation makes sense to me, based on details of onscreen canon and conclusions that can be easily drawn from it.
This is something a little different.
It’s inspired by canon, inspired by some of the more direct headcanons I’ve drawn from it– but this analysis is less about canon support, and more about just… how I like to imagine things.
It’s about love. Specifically, different types of love that ENCOM programs feel.
I’ve talked before, in my more canon-detail-focused analysis, about their attitude toward their “gods.” I’ve talked about their polytheistic, individually-focused worship, often treating the Users as familiarly as colleagues or family– and their acceptance that deities can be imperfect, limited in their power, and often in conflict with each other.
And I’ve talked about how neatly all of this fits into the film’s Greco-Roman-inspired aesthetic, completing the theme with this… very ancient-Greek-inspired sort of religion.
I’ve talked about the ways I think their religion and their sexuality are intertwined. I’ve talked about the ritual at the I/O Tower when Tron arrives to contact Alan-1, and how clearly erotic the whole structure of it seems to be. And how that, too, ties in to some of the eroticism that ancient Greek worshipers had with their gods.
Now I’m going to go just a bit beyond that, and talk about what I imagine love means to programs.
And past this point, it’s really more my own fantasy than any sort of logical observation. It’s definitely not an attempt to say anything “true” about the source material.
But it may be of interest to you if, for instance, you’ve read my fanfic about Tron and his polycule, and want some more insight into how I see that working.
Anyway.
As I understand it, ancient Greece had some different words for different kinds of love. A few of them were Eros (love for a sexual partner), Philia (love for a friend) and Agape (love for a god). And when I imagine the kinds of love that Encom programs experience in their daily lives, I imagine them roughly echoing these three categories.
But with some differences.
For one thing, I imagine that for programs, all three of these types of love can be (for lack of a better word) sexual.
Because I imagine that programs have sexuality– or something like it– that is much more ubiquitous throughout all aspects of their world than it is for humans.
This is not to say that all programs interact sexually with every part of their world. In fact, I would say:
-There’s enormous diversity among different programs in how they experience pretty much everything.
-This can range from a life that humans would categorize as hypersexual, to one that humans would categorize as completely asexual.
-And even so, the way humans would categorize it is a different thing from how the programs themselves experience it.
But:
-I think programs have a lot of interactions, with many aspects of their world, that involve sharing of energy, data and sensation.
-Some of these interactions are just for personal enjoyment, and some of them are part of fulfilling a program’s function.
-And I think many of these types of “sharing,” for many programs, can feel pleasurable and intimate in… ways that humans would probably equate with sex.
So, I think that in program society, it’s considered a fairly common, normal and accepted thing to have many different relationships at once that all feature something like sexual desire.
–Not with all the same connotations that sex has in any human culture, of course. Programs echo humans, but they are very much their own kind of creature. The exact significance of these feelings to them is probably untranslatable into any context humans could fully grasp.
But humans, if they got to participate in these experiences, would likely think something along the lines of, “…um, this seems sexual to me.”
And these can include relationships with friends and colleagues, life partners, and Users.
The User connection is a bit strange, though. Because, prior to the arrival of Flynn in the system, there were no programs and no Users who had a fully accurate idea of what each other’s lives and identities were even like. They could only make assumptions about each other and what their interactions meant. The assumptions were… very incomplete.
They communicated, through contact like what Tron has with Alan in the I/O tower. But it was a limited type of communication. They exchanged what was necessary to complete the function, and knew nothing beyond that.
So, Alan had no idea that Tron felt this contact as something partly profound-spiritual-communion, partly ecstatic-sexual-intimacy. And Tron had no idea that Alan experienced it as a mundane typing of commands into a computer as part of his day job in a cubicle, unaware that Tron even had feelings.
If they ever learned the truth about each other, there would be a lot to overcome in their relationship. Disillusionment, resentment, heartbreak, guilt.
(An angsty wringer that I absolutely want to put both those blorbos through someday. Because I eat Program drama for dessert.)
…So anyway, that’s Agape, the love for gods.
Eros and Philia are harder to separate. I imagine that they don’t really follow gender lines, because I don’t think gender means very much to programs at all. And both can be felt toward a fellow program, and both can include something very much like sexual attraction.
But then, it’s the same for us in our world, no? Where exactly do we draw the lines, for example, between lovers and casual hookups and friends-with-benefits, or between asexual romance and queerplatonic friendship?
It’s not a set of separate boxes, but more of a vocabulary of descriptors, which can mean different things to different people, and can apply in all sorts of different overlapping ways.
One possible way you could imagine the Philia/Eros divide, for Programs, is “redundant functions” as opposed to “complementary functions.”
Perhaps, to programs, a friend is the one who shares many things in common, adding strength when you need a whole lot extra of a particular feature– while a lover or counterpart is the one who is different from you, in ways that complete you wherever you are lacking.
In this understanding, Tron has both these types of love with both Yori and Ram… but his connection with Ram leans more toward “friend,” while his connection with Yori leans more toward “counterpart.”
Ram shares more things in common with him– the experience of having been imprisoned together; the skills of disc and lightcycle combat– but still complements him by being the extrovert to his introvert, the sweet cinnamon roll to his prickly brooding.
Yori can bring out his loving side, and they certainly share a lot in ideology and goals, but her skills are especially complementary to his. When he needs to make plans for getting to the Tower and the MCP, he goes immediately to her, because he has no idea how to do any of that without Yori’s expertise with the Solar Sailer, and Yori’s connection with Dumont.
What he feels for Flynn, on the other hand, is probably very confusing to him.
He is not used to experiencing the pull of a User’s energy, the sort of attraction he feels to the I/O Tower– in the body of someone who looks and feels like a Program, and seems to be leading a life very similar to his own– while exhibiting a perplexing mixture of different and similar abilities.
Yori and Ram…. both got confused in the very same sort of way, I think.
I like to imagine they eventually figured things out to a degree, and settled into a polyamorous arrangement that was beneficial to all of them.
(I primarily write about this between Tron, Ram and Yori. But Flynn and Alan can have their place in it as well.)
(A polytheistic polycule, adding the letters that turn the ship-name “Yortram” into “Fortran.” Because I’m a hopeless romantic and also a fucking nerd.)