So I recently wrote a fic with some ambitious headcanons about the Data Pushers in the Encom System. Basically I speculated, what if they are the Encom equivalent of the ISOs? And I also gleefully yoinked @coupleofdays idea that the more non-humanoid Data Pushers are equivalent to the Automata from Tron: Identity– the faction of ISOs who don’t bother to look like Users at all.

I ended up making Bead Curtain lady the Encom version of Sierra– the Automata who takes mostly-humanoid form when spending time in places where that’s the custom.

(I named her Vale– originally in homage to Sierra, because a sierra is a mountain and a vale is a valley – but her veil-like curtain provided an additional layer to that wordplay and you know how much I like things to have layers.)

Anyway, she wasn’t a main fixture of the story, but I implied that she does have a “true form” that isn’t humanoid, and she’ll share it in private with people she trusts.

I’m picturing her true form as some big floating ethereal jellyfish, the curtain transformed into a drifting veil of tendrils that move like they’re underwater, shifting lazily through a delicate spectrum of pastels.

She gives great hugs.

Maybe I’ll draw her.