kerosene-in-a-blender:

There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed in fandom I’m going to call “Canon is mean to my blorbo” wherein fans of ongoing or serial media become really attached to one or a group of characters and build up in their minds an idea of how their story is going to go, but when the story doesn’t end up going in that direction, regardless of how well the direction it actually takes was built up along the way, these fans will insist it was done out of malice or disregard towards their faves, rather than simply being a logical continuation or addition to the story that simply wasn’t how they would have liked it to go.

Yeah

My feeling about Tron (1982) and its crimes against Ram is… probably a mixed version of that. Maybe not fully that, but…

-Ram was probably intended to be just “sweet nice young guy who dies senselessly to make the real protagonists realize how tragic war is” and he did serve that purpose effectively

-the way he died, with Flynn just discovering his own superpowers but too late to save him or even realize he was in danger, works well for both underscoring the tragedy and also for underscoring how Flynn is an oblivious dumbass

-i personally feel as if the most important plot point in that scene was “Flynn is an oblivious dumbass” and the second most important was “Flynn got a deeper realization of how tragic war is’

-both purposes are served by an alternate interpretation where Ram’s apparent disintegration was not actually death, and Ram actually ended up totally fine and safe somewhere else

-the scene’s primary purpose ("Flynn is an oblivious dumbass”) is served better by such an interpretation

-but

-i am self-aware enough to know my own weaknesses

-and know that the reason I take such interpretations is less for the narrative value of the scene, and more because Ram is my precious cinnamon roll.