astercontrol:

the most introspective analysis of why the hell i’m into Tron fic

So it can be interesting to explore the weird web of connections between what we enjoy in fictional fantasy and what we actually want in real life. I mean, all sorts of connections and contrasts, and our needs and wants in life do bleed into our daydreams and our favorite fiction, in some way or another.

But it’s not as simple as just fantasizing about the same thing you want.

And it can be pretty futile to try and theorize reasons why a thing you like in fiction might connect to your real life. Very little chance of proving or disproving anything for sure. Still, sometimes, I guess it can be intriguing just as a sort of… self-exploration exercise.

And I’ve been trying to do some of that with my love for the Tron fandom.

There are whole other essays I can write about parts of why the fandom appealed to me– why for example I like the idea of erotic stories set inside a computer world, between bodies made of electronic data– or why I like to imagine the Programs’ anatomy and their acts of intimacy in the exact way I do. And all of that probably says things about me… things that I could put lots of words into analyzing.

But right now I’m going to focus on the bemusing topic of just where that love has ended up fixating.

Primarily on the original 1982 film, and more specifically, on fan theories about the relationship between Programs and the Users who wrote them.

So the premise of the film is simple, in a way that branches into a lot of complexity pretty fast: “What if computer software had feelings?” The setting is Encom, a programming corporation in which all the programs, for some unexplained reason, are alive in humanoid forms resembling the programmers who wrote them. This seems to have occurred spontaneously, unknown to anyone on the outside– but inside the computer system all the programs just go on living in a mysterious and beautiful world, with their own types of love and work, friendship and conflict and war, and religious faith in their Users.

The supposed main character, Flynn, finds himself inside that world and tries to help them. But he’s not the main subject of my fascination. See, he is a human programmer, but none of the humanoid programs he meets in there are his own creations. And the dynamic between creator and creation is where my focus seems to have landed.

The movie’s portrayal of a lot of things is subtle and open to interpretation– which of course is what attracts my puzzle-solving, pattern-recognizing mind! But in particular, the bond between Program and User is a fascinatingly complex and broken mixture of different aspects of different kinds of relationships familiar to humans.

Most clearly on the surface, a mixture of religious devotion and work relationships, and perhaps something of a knight’s service to a monarch. Slightly below the surface, hints of the relationship to an alter ego; to a deeper and truer part, or ideal version, of one’s own self. And of course, distinct undertones of familial and romantic and definitely erotic love.

The erotic aspect of it really seized my imagination, I have to admit. There’s a truly intense sexual energy throughout the scene where Tron, alongside his friends, recharges himself on liquid power until he can “feel the Call” of his creator, Alan-1. And that sexual imagery continues and intensifies as he approaches the Input-Output Tower to answer the Call and contact his User.

It’s a religious temple, yes, and guarded by a sort of temple priest– but the priest’s outfit is disturbingly phallic, and the ritual of welcoming Tron into the Tower involves speaking ceremonial words about “growing and extending into the realm of the invisible” while Tron stands with both hands clasped over his groin.

If it were played less solemnly– and not couched in the middle of an ostensibly family-friendly adventure movie– this scene would be an obvious sexual comedy, with zero further changes required.

And the other sexual undertones, in other aspects of the movie, all seem to link into this.

Flynn, the one User in the computer world, seems to inspire uncontrollable attraction in programs who get close to him. There is a starkly homoerotic feel to the way Ram looks at him while dying in his arms, and the way Tron holds him while welcoming him aboard the Solar Sailer. Those are the sorts of scenes that will feel as unsubtle as a smack on the face to anyone even remotely sensitive to homoerotic subtext.

But then, even more explicitly, there’s the scene at the end when Flynn and Yori kiss– even though Yori is Tron’s established romantic partner, and has no interest in leaving him for Flynn. The pull of Flynn’s User-Power was just that strong, in that moment.

Tron and Yori’s romance is interesting in itself. It’s a relationship that seems to exist as an echo of the established romantic relationship between their programmers, Alan and Lora out in the “real” world. Perhaps Tron and Yori don’t even know why they’re mirroring those patterns. They clearly love each other, but without all the same context that human love has.

They don’t seem to be capable of reproduction, and maybe not even humanoid sex. They don’t even kiss until at the very end, after Flynn leaves– where it’s implied that they didn’t previously know how to kiss until Flynn showed Yori. Not so much a king’s exercise of droit du seigneur, but more like a wedding gift from a god– a goodbye kiss for Yori and also for Tron, given indirectly through her.

And of course there’s the Deleted Love Scene, cut from right before Tron and Yori go to the I/O Tower (but included in DVD extras). They meet up in her quarters, ostensibly to plan how they’re going to get to the Tower, but Yori shows immediate interest in sneaking in some intimacy while they’re alone together.

She magical-girl-transforms into a diaphanously sparkling cape and opens her arms to him. He approaches her, only to stare somewhat blankly and ask again, “How are we going to get to the I/O Tower?” So she improvises, tracing circuits on his body with her finger, under pretense of illustrating the route they could take.

We get only a few seconds of this, and no vocal or facial reaction from Tron, before the scene fades out. But for what it’s worth, the response we see in his circuits is the canon basis for the now-ubiquitous theme in erotic fanfiction, where a program’s circuitry can turn purple or pink in response to arousal and stimulation.

…So, from all of this, I got the clear feeling that whatever type of sexuality programs may have, it’s focused around their own most powerful motivation. The one that’s as strong, in its own way, as the human drive to reproduce.

While human sex evolved around reproducing, Program sex evolved around their own closest equivalent urge– which is just the urge to contact and serve the Users, in whatever way one is programmed to.

And like reproduction, it’s not necessary to sexual pleasure. Programs clearly can touch each other in pleasurable erotic ways, with or without a User involved– just as humans can satisfy each other’s sex drives in plenty of non-reproductive ways. Yori and Tron– and perhaps Tron and Ram as well– could have had a lifetime of love and mutual circuit-stimulation without ever going to the I/O Tower.

But Tron, at least, seems to be a little bit of a puritan about it, in my interpretation. He will accept sexual relief from other programs as a stopgap… but whenever possible, he prefers to save himself for his User.

And even if he later adapts, settling into a marriage-like relationship with Yori, under the new peace and freedom of the system– he will still consider his regular meetings with Alan-1 to be an essential focus of his sexuality, a relationship he would never, ever consider giving up, no matter how much he and Yori also love and satisfy each other.

Program love, I imagine, is very ancient-Greek. Polygamous, often, but with variations in how the love is expressed. Polytheistic, too, but with each individual worshiper particularly devoted to a specific patron god.

And I imagine, in their world, the different kinds of love all come with a sexual component. If Ram is ever data-recovered and brought back to life, I imagine he would be Tron’s Philia, alongside the Eros of Yori and the Agape of Alan-1. But in the Program sense of those words, the relationships would all be some degree of sexual, making his wife and his friend and his god all partners in a polyamorous quartet– perhaps even the true meaning of those four squares over Tron’s heart.

(This makes the continuation of the plot, years later in the “Tron: Legacy” sequel, all the more tragic. We’re told that Flynn took Tron from his original role as security monitor of the Encom computer, and put him to work protecting a new computer world that Flynn was building. We get pretty much no details of the circumstances of this move, only the disastrous fallout from it many years later. And I find it extremely difficult to imagine a scenario where Tron would have agreed to this uncoerced. Whether or not Ram and Yori got to accompany him, Alan-1 certainly didn’t. And this would have devastated the Tron I know.)

(So, for my own mental health– and also to explain how Flynn got away with pirating Encom’s security software– I imagine that he left the original copy of Tron undisturbed. It doesn’t erase the tragedy of what the new copy went through… it probably worsens it, if the copy knows he’s a copy, knows his loved ones don’t even miss him because he’s not even really gone. But at least– at the very least– it lets me believe that at least one version of Tron lived happily ever after.)

Anyway. All of this is the context in which I’ve been trying to understand why the hell my mind-- especially the romantic and sexual parts of it– find this creator-creation love so very compelling.

It is a fantasy of a true love that’s unrealistically pure and complete, I suppose. A program is, of course, made up of conditionals, of if-then statements… but the ones governing the permissions reserved for the User must be deeply integral to identity. Especially in programs like these ones: made by programmers in a 1980’s-era corporation, and almost all custom-written to serve specific purposes for their creators.

The only one of them whose ownership resembles that of modern software is Ram– who is subtly implied to have been written by a programmer at Encom, but was then sold to an insurance company and spent some time serving the public there, before being captured by the enemy and brought back to Encom to be imprisoned.

Ram is the only one who ever calls Flynn “My User”– and I think this is because, to him, designed for the service of End-Users, his User can be anyone. Which, to my observation, reflects in his constant sweet helpfulness toward all who need it, his fierce loyalty to Tron… and of course (to the horniest side of my observation, but still there) the omnipresent air of seductive sluttiness he gives off, in absolutely every scene.

(I don’t know who decided to give that program a name evocative of both “taking it vigorously from behind” and being “random access,” but holy hell does it fit him. Ram may be corporate property, but he’s the most open-source shareware at heart, and I love him so much for it. Actor Dan Shor definitely understood the assignment.)

But even Ram’s love, offered openly to so many, is still so simple and pure in its own way. And for a User authorized to use him, it would be as unconditional as the love of any other program in the cast.

So maybe that’s the fantasy? Unconditional love, to a degree humans will never quite manage.

Except that in real life, the very idea of unconditional love makes my skin crawl.

From both sides, actually. To love someone else unconditionally is to make yourself horrifyingly vulnerable to abuse. Dogs have unconditional love, and look how badly dogs get treated sometimes. If you couldn’t stop loving even under those circumstances– if your love doesn’t even have conditions like “I’ll love you as long as you don’t hit me with a rolled-up newspaper and lock me in a kennel all day,” then what’s to protect you?

And from the viewpoint of the one being loved– well, being unconditional makes the love pretty much meaningless, doesn’t it? If another person’s love for you is not even conditional on you remaining the same person in any way– then they sure don’t love you for who you are. Why do they love you? What do they love? Can’t even be you, exactly… because it would persist even if every aspect of “you” was replaced with something totally different. And yet, somehow, it always seems to exist in the same space and time as you. Following you like a weird possessing ghost. What the hell is it? Is it just an idea of you? How far removed is that idea from any of what you really are?

It’s why I’ve never found it easy to feel very close to any of my blood family. The idea that they love me in a way like that… a devotion that’s everlasting no matter how little we have in common, no matter how vanishingly few parts of my personality fit any description that would ever appeal to them otherwise? Bound to me by… who-knows-what? Ugh. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

And yet. Isn’t it more or less the same thing as the lines of code that bind Tron to Alan-1? And why do I find that bond so beautiful, when the closest things in human life are eldritch horror to me?

Do I somehow feel that this sort of connection is more appealing for erotic love than familial love?

No… I doubt it. if a romantic suitor felt that kind of attachment to me despite having zero other things in common, it would probably come across as equally creepy, if not more so.

Or is it, maybe, that I feel this sort of connection is appealing for religious love? Is that the aspect of Tron and Alan’s multifaceted relationship that makes actual sense to me? Is this the sort of bond I like the idea of sharing with a god?

Also doesn’t feel quite right to me. I mean, I have never, personally, been able to believe in a god– or anything that society recognizes as a supernatural power of any kind.

And yes, I do experience the occasional pleasant fantasy of how nice it could be if there was someone in charge, some plan to all this, some kind and powerful being at the top who knew what they were doing and could be trusted to lead us to a good future! But as it is, I find it pretty much impossible to believe that’s happening in this world.

And– in this world, and in regard to the sort of all-powerful entity I was raised to think of as a God– I feel that, realistically, it would be very bad if such a thing existed.

Because realistically, it would mean we are under the rule of the most absolute-powered, absolutely-corrupt dictatorship imaginable, with no hope of escape, ever. A ruler who constantly (according to our observation of the world) does things, allows things, and (according to various religious texts) commands us to do things, which are downright evil according to our own emotions and our own capacity for reason–

–and which we have no choice but to consider good. Because in the framework of this faith, we have to believe that there is an objective, unquestionable standard for what “good” is– and we have to believe that this absolute ruler of the universe is the source of that standard, and our only reference for what that standard is. No matter how terrible it feels to us, and how difficult it is to come up with any possible reasoning for how it could be good.

God by definition is good, and Good by definition is what God wants. Perfect circle. To me, a perfect, horrifying dystopia.

So I’m not exactly sure where the User/Program fascination originates for me. Sure, it’s a deeply compelling meld of romantic, familial, workplace and religious relationships– and yet in my own life I pretty much hate the power dynamic, the affront to personal freedom, that goes along with all of those.

And yeah, that includes romance. That same aversion to relationships with total, unconditional devotion is probably part of why I am so close to aromantic, in terms of my connection to other real-life humans.

I have experienced living in a marriage. I have experienced relationships that tried to call themselves romance. And all I can say is that I didn’t feel I’d found anything resembling a fulfilling relationship… until I experienced living in the loosely-connected polycule I discovered during my time in LA.

That specific setup didn’t work out, for a lot of reasons none of us could fully control, but the taste of it convinced me that this is the kind of relationship I want in my life. A house of roommates who are affectionate friends-with-benefits– but with enough space to allow everyone a room of their own and clear boundaries. And an understanding that physical and sexual contact between any of these companions can be an acceptable thing, if the people involved want it, but not otherwise.

Enough people that if the arrangement isn’t working out for any one of them, that one can feel somewhat free to move on to a better place, without fear of abandoning anyone else all alone.

Enough people that there’ll usually be someone there for you, for whatever you need– whether it’s practical help, social company, or sexual relief.

But also enough people that no individual person feels an obligation to always be the one there for anyone else.

I dread the kind of devotion that makes someone feel that obligation, to be always there for someone. It feels to me like it violates personal autonomy. It means any consent you give to anything is automatically unreliable– how can you, or anyone, be sure you’re not just agreeing to something you don’t want out of obligation?

I know I have a fierce independent streak. And I’m realizing lately that it’s not so much a concern for either “appearing weak” or “imposing on others” – it’s mainly just because other people can’t be depended on.

And that’s not an insult to them! And the idea that it could be considered an insult says terrifying things, to me, about what society expects of people. Because what does it mean, when you’re expected to be someone that people can depend on, can rely on? It means your own needs always come after that. It means you are a step away from being enslaved, being property, having no right to put your own needs first.

And sure, when people say someone is “dependable” or “reliable,” they rarely mean it in a sense that extreme. Either they are just saying that person is pretty often willing to help– not nearly always, but just in comparison to other people who are very seldom willing to help–

–or, they do mean the person is always or almost always willing to help– and they haven’t given actual, serious thought to whether that worryingly high willingness is real, or coerced by obligation.

But I give that a whole hell of a lot of thought. When I say I can’t depend on other people, I am saying I can’t expect to own them as slaves.

And yes, I do know that there are some necessities where it’s vital to have something you can rely on more than any one human being should ever be expected to be reliable. For me, often that “something” is a system of my own that I come up with– one of my fiercely-independent ways of taking care of my own necessities.

And when I can’t come up with such a system on my own, the next best option, for me, is to have a large group of people to rely on. I do feel that people can’t ethically be treated as “reliable” on an individual level. But as a group, with responsibility spread out enough, it becomes, sometimes, a valid option.

Anyway.

I guess, with all that infodump, I’ve just painted a pretty clear picture for you of what I’m like to live with.

And in the process, I guess I’ve made it abundantly clear that in real life, I pretty much loathe the idea of being on either side of anything resembling this Program/User relationship that I romanticize so hard in my fantasies.

So… what gives?

I mean. I’m aware of the whole gamut of things people can enjoy in fiction and fantasy, regardless of how bad they’d be in reality. And I don’t judge. But I know that my own fantasies– the things I personally like to imagine as pleasurable escape– don’t tend to eroticize or romanticize any of the stuff I consider dystopian. At least, when dystopia appears in my fantasies, it’s in the context of protagonists working together to fight against it.

My pleasures don’t get that dark… not to the point of delighting in the thought of hurt without comfort; torment without love or enjoyment. I can read and appreciate many well-written stories, regardless of topic. But if I read a story where someone is hurt, in a way they don’t want and don’t enjoy on any level, that dynamic itself will not be an aspect of the story that gives me pleasure.

And when I imagine Programs and Users, I don’t even fall into that happy fantasy I mentioned earlier– the fantasy of a world where God is truly good and has a trustworthy plan for it all. In the context of Tron canon, the Users aren’t that kind of gods– they’re human programmers, they’re messy and imperfect and sometimes outright malicious, and they rarely have a clear idea of what they’re doing or how it’s going to go.

And in my daydreams, I don’t even imagine that the programs believe in that nice little fantasy. Maybe some of them do at first, like Tron did before Flynn cleared things up in that scene on the Solar Sailer. But as Users and Programs get to know each other’s true selves more deeply, growing the relationship into the kind of love I daydream about– they learn how messed-up it is.

They have no illusions, eventually. The program knows that the User is their superior only in terms of software permissions– and in many other ways is actually less rational, less capable of untainted ethics and unbiased reasoning than a Program is.

And the Program loves the User anyway. Whole-hearted, unwavering devotion, the deepest motivation and the greatest fulfilment in their whole life– even knowing that this is all just the result of lines of code somewhere forcing them to feel that.

It doesn’t matter. Even with full understanding, those lines of code still make themselves sacred in the Program’s eye, and the love persists.

Which, to me, somehow… actually feels perfectly fine? No different from enjoying human emotions and sensations while knowing the evolutionary reasons behind them.

Sure, I can delight in the feeling of affection for others in my life, and the joy of being close to those I feel it for. Sure, it’s just chemicals, just oxytocin and serotonin and the bodily reactions they set off, and it evolved to increase survival rates by keeping the social unit together to cooperate in raising the young and hunting food and so on. But who cares. The point is, it feels good.

Sure, I take pleasure in eating good food because my body uses dopamine as an incentive for that action to ensure I stay nourished. Sure, I enjoy sex for the same reason, even though my ancestors evolved that hit of pleasure because it incentivizes reproduction, and yeah, I don’t personally plan to reproduce. It still feels good.

So… where’s the disconnect?

Why can’t I appreciate the idea of real-life familial love or romantic love or religious love in that same way? Why is it just the fictional Program/User versions that I find so attractive– as well as those specific emotional and sensory experiences that feel to me like the closest thing to real-life equivalents?

And…

And wow, I think writing this all down just helped me figure it out, just now.

And… damn it. Really? Took me this long?

Did I forget the most self-indulgent Program/User fic I’ve ever written? Even with “A Lightcycle Built For Two” under my belt, I seriously didn’t figure this out sooner?

Yay me.

It’s not the romantic love. It’s not the religious worship. It’s not the familial relationships or the workplace relationships.

All of those– plus the most literal surface imagery, the Program and User themselves– are vehicles to convey different aspects of a feeling. All of them bring me something, some little frisson of feeling that I enjoy, amid all of what I don’t.

But the context in which I like that feeling isn’t actually any of the relationships serving here as metaphors.

It’s the other one, the one I just barely mentioned only in passing.

The freakin’ REASON why it resonates so much with me that Tron programs are played by the same actors as their programmers.

That bit about “relationship to an alter ego; to a deeper and truer part, or ideal version, of one’s own self.”

It’s about that same knightly service, that same unconditional love, that same fierce whole-souled devotion— but not to someone else.

To being who I am. My best version of me. All the parts of it.

It’s about loving myself.

THAT’s what resonated with me. THAT’s why I like what I like.

Hell yeah.

I suppose another aspect to this is… it’s sorta a fantasy about how nice it could be if my own feelings were under more control.

If doing my job, and believing in a purpose to my life– and especially being happy with the people I spend my life with– were so easy they felt like uncontrollable body functions.

I guess it’s the same reason I like Star Trek fanfic about the telepathic Vulcan mating bond. It removes all the hard work from staying in love. Never need to put in an effort to subdue petty annoyance; to try and care about a loved one’s interests; even to get horny when it’s time for sex. The Bond, the mythical magic of True Love, does it all for you.

In practice, so many ways that could be abused. So many ways it could even erase what you now consider your Self. So many reasons not to want that sort of mind control in real life.

But when your real-life emotions are an inner struggle, disobedient as hell, there’s some comfort in fantasies.