#& he's not supposed to look like uprising tron but what my take on him would be so

[betasuppe]

A very much so my-styled Uprising Rinz as my cool down distraction for the night♡

Close up because ehehehhhhh.... he so pwettyyyy♡♡♡

[mewtwowarrior]

Today’s story is directly connected to the “Depression” prompt one. There should be a part between the two, I was going to write up a summary of what happened between them, but it happened to come out in the process of the story. I still plan on writing the bridging part sometime and sharpening everything up, but that’s another story for another time.

Long story short, this takes place pre-Uprising, where Ark is one of the Programs Tron trained and met a bad end before the show started. This is leading up to a particular scene/story I have in mind that’s been floating in my brain for a while.

I still need to rewatch Uprising and the movies, so it’s playing a little loosely with canon, there’s definitely stuff I need to go back and rework once I canon review.

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Rough drafts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 (you are here) | Part 4

Second drafts: Part 1 | Part 2 version 1 | Part 2 version 2

Final draft: Combined Parts  

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Ark stealthily made her way towards her goal, leaving the rendezvous point behind.

The chosen meeting spot had been some distance away from where she was headed, it was safer that way.

She was feeling confident, this wasn't her first mission or even her first solo mission, she'd handle it like she had all the others.

Tron had been on edge, though, something about this had felt off to him. Which was one of the reasons why Ark had volunteered to go instead. Ever since that chance meeting, they had been a team, just like back in the old days. Well, not quite. They were still trying to protect the system, however, there was a very clear threat they were now facing.

As a System Monitor, it was her programming and her duty to protect the Grid and, so far, this was the best way to do it.

She had been careful on the run, trying to stay out of sight as much as she could, so she had missed all the whisperings of Tron's return, right up until they had crossed paths.

He had already come to the same conclusion that she had, that the only way to save the system was to fight against Clu's forces. Having worked with Tron before, Ark teamed up with him without a second thought.

Tron had been doing this for a while, so Ark learned on the go. The more they accomplished, the more confidence and hope she had. One day, the system would be free.

But, for now, she still had work to do.

Ark approached her destination and held back, watching to make sure that everything looked how it should. They had observed this place for a while and had obtained some of the schematics.

There were still questions, though, Tron had thought there were too many, but Ark had argued that if they waited too long, it could be too late. If they really were almost done developing a weapon, then they needed to sabotage it before it was finished. Even if they couldn't completely destroy it, they could at least set things back and buy a little more time.

Tron had finally agreed with her, but had insisted that she take extra precautions. Ark gladly accepted these terms, while she thought it would be an easy matter to take care of, it wouldn't hurt to be more cautious.

The plan was simple, go in, find the weapon, and destroy it. Nothing else mattered, there were to be no deviations or distractions, no matter what. The weapon hadn't shown up on the schematics, but there were a few places where it could be. They ranked them in order of most to least likely, though, if she got through checking some of them, and things started to look dangerous, she was to get out. They could try again another time.

Waiting for the guard to change, Ark made her move, slipping in and counting the time. She had practiced the timing over and over, until both her and Tron were confident she had it down.

Darting in, she went around a dark corner and paused. They didn't know exactly what or who would be waiting for her inside, and she wanted to be as ready as she could be.

Ark couldn't turn off her circuits, so her presence was announced by a constant glow. She was thankful that as part of their plan to free the Grid, she had taken up Tron's more minimal circuits on missions, rather than her own distinctive lines.

She silently counted her steps as she walked down hallways and turned corners. This place was massive, and so far, she had been lucky to not run into anyone.

Consulting her mental map, she was getting close to the first room to check. According to the schematics, it was a large room, so it'd likely be full of Programs working on the weapon.

There didn't seem to be much activity, though, no one was coming or going down the hallway. Ark kept on, though, and when she reached the door, she carefully peeked around, hoping that if anyone saw her, her generic mask wouldn't catch that much attention.

At a glance, the room was empty. She couldn't see all of it, though, so she headed in carefully, sticking close to the wall.

She made her way around part of the room, and once she had gotten a clear look a things, Ark was confident that there was nothing of interest here. Frustrated and ready to check the next section, she chose to walk across the middle of the room to get out quicker.

That was her last mistake.

So focused on checking the perimeter of the room, she hadn't spared a glance upwards, where guards were lined up all around the room. When she reached the center, they all jumped down at once, surrounding her completely.

Despite being vastly outnumbered, Ark fought fiercely, derezzing quite a few guards before her strength and luck ran out. Exhausted, she was easy to capture, she had one guard on each side gripping her arm, and another had their disk pointed at the back of her neck. It was then that she realized that none of the guards had fought to kill, that capturing her was their endgame.

Ark tried to pull out of the guards' grip, but they just held on tighter. She just didn't have the energy to escape at the moment, so she'd have to conserve her strength until she recovered enough to break her way out.

Trying to make things more difficult for the guards, Ark went limp, not bothering to help walk. It didn't matter, though, they dragged her along like it was nothing.

Her mind racing, she tried to remember the pathway she was being taken down and how it compared to the schematics, but she soon lost track as they went down corridors that had been unmarked.

Finally, they reached their destination. After entering the room, the guards forced Ark to her knees. She struggled a little, but after realizing it was inevitable, she decided to hoard what strength she had left.

She didn't have long to wait like that, she heard the incoming footsteps before an all-too-familiar voice spoke up.

"Well, well, look what I found. You're wearing Tron's circuits, but you're not him. Who are you?"

Clu strode forward and reached down to deactivate her helmet in order to reveal her face.

Ark put on the most resolute face she could muster up, glaring at Clu silently.

She might be attempting to hide her emotions, but Clu didn't bother to disguise his shock.

"You! You were supposed to be dead cycles ago. Where did Tron dredge you up from?"

He was only answered by a scowl from Ark.

Clu easily regained his composure, "It really doesn't matter. I had hoped to catch Tron in my trap, but you're not a bad second place prize." He gestured to Ark, "Give me everything you know about Tron and the rest of your little resistance, and I'll kill you now. Refuse, and we'll torture the information out of you."

It was starting to sink in that she wasn't going to get out of this. But, there was no way that Ark was going to sell out Tron or anyone else. Scared, but defiant, she simply stared at Clu with a cold glare.

Clu shrugged, "It's your choice." He waved a casual hand to the guards holding Ark, "You know what to do."

The guards dragged Ark off through the hallways to one of several different rooms designed for torture.

Back at the rendezvous point, Tron waited for far longer than he should have, scanning the area to see if there was any sign of Ark. Eventually, it was clear that Ark wasn't coming back, that the mission had failed, and something had happened to her. Even so, he still waited a little while longer before giving up and heading back.

No matter how much they threatened or hurt Ark, she wouldn't even speak. In some ways, it was easy. She sought refuge in her programming, as a System Monitor, she had to do whatever it took to protect the Grid, even at the cost of herself. It was against everything she stood for to give up Tron and the rest of the resistance.

As the cycles went on, Clu got bored with Ark's silence, so he devised a new plan.

The two hadn't been face to face since she had been captured, which made his personal appearance surprising.

"I've never liked you, you know. But, I think I've finally found a way to make you useful. I've been working on a process to erase Program's memories. You're not giving yours up, so they're of no use to me. Without your memories, you'd still look the same, though. Which makes you the perfect bait for your dear friend Tron."

Ark gasped, and for the first time, finally shouted at Clu, "No!"

Clu smirked, "Oh, so you do still have some emotions left. Hold onto that, it'll be the last one you'll ever feel." He waved a dismissive hand at Ark and the guards came in to grab her.

Struggling, she managed to break free just for an instant, her desperation giving her just enough strength before she collapsed and the guards grabbed her once more.

Ark tried to escape again, but the cycles of torture had drained her of nearly all of her energy. She didn't give up, though, she fought until the very last second, right up until the rectification was complete.

Once it was over, Clu admired his handiwork and the blank expression on Ark's face. He addressed one of the guards, "Keep her in a low power mode for now, we'll bring her out when the time is right."

[odanurr87]

Let’s talk... TRON, Part 1: Legacy

Let me preface by saying I have not watched the original 1982 TRON movie. I was introduced to the world of TRON in 2010 with the release of TRON: Legacy, a sequel that tried to reboot, or rather re-energize, the franchise, starring Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, Garrett Hedlund as his son, Sam, and the mesmerizing Olivia Wilde as Quorra (admit it, she’s gorgeous!). Neither the critics nor the public were too thrilled by it at the time, arguing it was more spectacle than substance. To this day, the movie stands at a 51% critic score and a 63% audience score on RT. IMDb puts it slightly higher at a 68% audience score. I recently re-watched it on Netflix so I decided to share my thoughts on it. You may have noticed this blog post isn’t titled, “My thoughts on...” as I usually do for reviews. That’s because I’m not just going to talk about TRON: Legacy but also its, arguably superior, animated spin-off, TRON: Uprising, released between 2012 and 2013, starring an amazing voice cast that I will mention in due course. It remains one of my favourite animated series after Avatar: The Last Airbender. But let’s get to it, shall we?

Spoilers for TRON: Legacy naturally follow. You’ve been warned.

Legacy follows the character of Sam Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn, an employee and eventually CEO of ENCOM corporation, who has been missing for the past 20 years (the father, not the son, obviously). The opening of the movie showcases that Sam has apparently inherited some of his father’s programming genius (even though he never gets to use it again afterwards) but he also has trouble accepting his father’s disappearance and moving on, pulling off reckless stunts for the sake of it. We’re also briefly introduced to Bruce Boxleitner, reprising his role as Adam Bradley, Kevin’s friend and business partner, a return I have no doubt fans of the original appreciated but he’s sadly underused, either as Bradley or in his much juicier role as Tron (for reasons that will become apparent soon). ENCOM is portrayed in a bad light because... they want to sell their products? I know what they’re trying to do here, and certainly parallels can be drawn to corporations like Microsoft or EA (”This year we put a 12 on the box”), even to this day, but it’s rather flimsy. No matter, since it isn’t long before Sam, having received a strange message, goes back to his father’s arcade shop and finds and activates a curious machine that transports him to the Grid.

The Sirens outfit Sam for the games. It doesn’t hurt these women are gorgeous to boot.

The Grid is a vast digital sandbox populated by programs who take on the shape of human beings. From the start, I loved the look and feel of it, with its mixture of black, blue, cyan, and white colours, and the incredible technology on display, from light cycles to light jets, all of these rendered from a baton that is most certainly not used as a sword. The outfits used by programs are also really cool to look at and while I’m partial to black myself, those sirens wearing white almost convinced me otherwise. TRON: Legacy takes advantage of the outfits to distinguish friend from foe: programs with red lights are on the side of the bad guys while programs with cyan or white lights are, mostly, free and can go either way. That’s the short version anyway. The long version is that all programs on the Grid should wear black (or white) outfits with cyan/white lights and stripes. However, those programs that have been repurposed by the enemy change their lights and stripes to red. In any case, it’s a simple way for the audience to tell who the bad guys are. Last but not least, every program on the Grid is equipped with an identity disc that serves both as a storage device, containing a program’s code and its “memories,” and a melee/ranged weapon for combat, as Sam soon finds out.

As you might have guessed,TRON: Legacy is, indeed, a beautiful movie to look at, something that shouldn’t come as a surprise considering it was directed by Joseph Kosinski, who who would later direct Oblivion, a movie with outstanding cinematography and, incidentally, a great soundtrack. Because, let’s face it, as visually stunning as this movie is, it wouldn’t be half as good were it not for its amazing soundtrack, composed by none other than Daft Punk, who curiously make an appearance and feel right at home on the Grid, and arranged and orchestrated by Joseph Trapanese (keep his name in mind ‘cause you’ll see it again). The combination of orchestral and electronic music imbue the world of TRON with a sense of wonder and strangeness, of having been transported to a world that works under a different set of rules. I can safely say without a shred of doubt that this movie’s soundtrack is excellent from beginning to end, with some of my favourite pieces being, “The Son of Flynn,” “Outlands,” “Solar Sailer,” “Disc Wars,” and, of course, “Flynn Lives.” Hey, I did say this soundtrack was awesome all the way through! It is definitely one of the best movie soundtracks I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to and it’s definitely worth a purchase.

Just knocking on the sky and listening to the sound, man.

What about the story? It starts out as a tragedy. A long time ago, when Flynn created the Grid, he brought over Bradley’s creation, Tron, to protect it, and also created a new program in his image named Clu. Together they were going to create the perfect system, whatever that was supposed to mean. Over time, and with their discovery of ISOs or isomorphic algorithms, programs that spontaneously came into existence, Kevin’s outlook on perfection was radically altered, but Clu’s remained the same and he regarded ISOs as a threat to his goal of creating the perfect system. This eventually devolved into insurrection as Clu turned on Flynn and Tron, killing the latter and forcing the former into exile. Fast forward 20 years to Sam’s arrival and Clu reigns supreme as dictator, repurposing programs to either fight in the Arena for entertainment or join his massive army. Having achieved the perfect system in his eyes, Clu has now turned his attention to Earth and has thus engineered Sam’s arrival on the Grid to force his father, Kevin (whom I’ll simply call Flynn from this point onwards), out of hiding and claim his disc, the key to the portal that links both worlds.

The movie initially plays around with Clu’s likeness to Flynn in order to trick Sam into trusting him, but it quickly dashes any and all potential it might’ve had by revealing the truth. It really is a shame as had Clu actually put some effort into recruiting Sam it would’ve made for a much more interesting movie, maybe echoing some of Jack’s conflict in Robin Williams’ Hook. Instead, the movie elects to follow up with a light cycle confrontation between Clu and Sam and the latter’s subsequent rescue by another program named Quorra. It’s a cool sequence to be sure and a badass way to introduce Wilde’s Quorra, not to mention it was supposedly part of Clu’s plan to ensure Flynn would know he had his son. Unfortunately, it turns out it’s mostly by coincidence that Flynn learns of this as he’s practically a recluse. Had it not been for Quorra’s curiosity and timely intervention, Clu’s plan would’ve ended almost as soon as it began.

An awkward reunion between father and son with Quorra caught in the middle.

Father and son are soon reunited but it’s a rather uncomfortable reunion. After all, how do you explain to your son why you’ve been absent for a large chunk of his life? It’s true Flynn tried to go back repeatedly and failed but it’s still a difficult thing to take in, more so when his father stubbornly refuses to play into Clu’s game and make a run for the portal. Quorra is also placed in a tough spot, immediately picking up on the tension between the two. As Flynn’s protégé sle clearly looks up to him for guidance and would give her life to protect him but she’s also persuaded by Sam’s argument, which is why she helps him get in touch with Zeus, comically played by Michael Sheen, a program who can allegedly arrange for safe passage to the portal. These three, together with Clu, are the core of the movie. How do they fare? 

Jeff Bridges delivers the best performance all around, even if it sometimes lacks the emotional outbursts you’d expect from being reunited with his son after all these years. Even so, he pours a lot of enthusiasm into some of his scenes, such as when he’s describing the ISOs, and he’s a little bit of a matchmaker if you pay close attention to the solar sailer scene. To my mind, Olivia Wilde comes second in the acting department, playing the somewhat naïve but totally badass Quorra. To be fair though, her best moments occur when she interacts with Garrett Hedlund’s character, Sam, so maybe they’re something of a packaged deal. I feel like Hedlund delivered a mostly solid performance across the board but probably not one that will turn any heads. Save for Quorra, the two Flynns appear quite stoic for a good chunk of the movie, or at least that’s how they came across to me. Things change a little when Flynn decides to play Clu’s game and rescue Sam from Zeus’ trap, losing his disc in the process, giving all three some time to bond during the beautiful solar sailer scene. It is then that we learn that Quorra is the last of the ISOs, and that Flynn has been protecting her for all these years.

Sam and Quorra share a moment aboard the solar sailer.

Of course, all good things must come to an end so it isn’t long before Clu’s top lieutenant, Rinzler, catches up to our heroes and captures Quorra. I have somehow managed to avoid talking about him for a while now and it’s decidedly unfair seeing as he’s probably more of a menace than Clu. Rinzler speaks very little in this movie but his mere presence is imposing, backed up by his incredible combat prowess as he proves to Sam during their fight in the Arena. With good reason, as it turns out Rinzler is none other than Tron, reprogrammed by Clu to become his loyal servant. In hindsight, it’s surprising I didn’t pick up on this sooner considering his outfit practically screams this. On the other hand, since I knew nothing about him before this movie, let alone his symbol, it would’ve been nothing short of a miracle had I done so (although the movie sets this up during the flashback sequence of Tron buying Flynn time to escape Clu). It is such a shame then that we don’t see Tron make a comeback, even though the movie hints that he was able to overcome Clu’s programming when he fell into the Sea of Simulation. If a sequel to Legacy is still in the works, it must include Bruce Boxleitner’s return as Tron. If not for his role in this, then most assuredly for his role in TRON: Uprising.

Rinzler is to Clu what Darth Vader is to Palpatine, except he doesn’t even need to speak.

Events now converge. As Clu prepares to lead his army through the portal to conquer Earth, Sam cooks up an intrepid plan to rescue Quorra and retrieve his father’s disc. It’s a great scene made more awesome by Daft Punk’s “Disc Wars” playing in the background. Don’t ask me why but it reminded me of the movie Flash Gordon, with Flash making his triumphant return, or at the very least a most daring entrance (ah, now I know why, it’s because I’m reminded of the drones in Flash Gordon!). I’m in two minds about this scene as it does speak volumes to see Jarvis’ reaction to the ensuing fight rather than the fight itself (it’s certainly more foreboding that way), but it’s still a pity that we don’t get a chance to see how Sam’s disc skills have improved since entering the Grid (probably not a lot going by his performance at the night club). And that moment when Sam takes the disc and alerts Clu to what’s going on... Damn, this song’s good!

Not one to give up easily, Clu follows our intrepid trio of heroes in a light jet chase to the portal for the inevitable showdown with his creator. Props to Jeff Bridges here again, as one does feel for Clu, to some extent, when he argues he was only doing what Flynn programmed him to do, trying to bring about the perfect system they had both dreamed about. Clu is a staunch proponent of order over chaos, he’s the Yin to Flynn’s Yang (Wenli!), something that is referenced several times in the movie through Clu’s baoding balls and Flynn’s Bits (that sounded better in my head). Perhaps if Flynn had spent some time explaining the Second Law of Thermodynamics to Clu all of this could’ve been avoided. Alas, Clu’s not looking for a reconciliation and is tricked by Flynn into letting Quorra and Sam go, or at least ignore them, thinking Flynn has the portal key. As Quorra struggles to push Sam into the portal, Clu realizes the truth and tries to get to them, forcing Flynn to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the pair’s escape. It’s a beautiful scene all in all, again greatly enhanced by Daft Punk’s music, that recreates the poster of the original movie. The movie ends with Sam back in the real world, ready to take over his father’s company and change the world, aided by Bradley and the incomparable beauty that is Quorra.

Kiss her, you fool! I mean, I’m half-glad they didn’t kiss but this is Olivia Wilde we’re talking about! Allowances must be made.

From a technical standpoint, TRON: Legacy is a great movie in my book, combining amazing visuals with an outstanding soundtrack, though the use of CGI to rejuvenise Clu and a young Flynn is indeed noticeable and may be somewhat bothersome (though it didn’t bother me at the time). This technology has however, come a long way as we were able to see in Disney’s Rogue One or even in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, so it’s not unlikely that a possible sequel could make use of the same, updated, technology, to bring back, say, a young Bruce Boxleitner as Tron (that would be awesome!). The story is perhaps more by the numbers (it certainly doesn’t tread new ground but why should it?) and it’s certainly not a character piece but I found it to be entertaining with a measured pace, carefully balancing the action with the more quiet scenes and executing both rather well. Nevertheless, if I had to come down hard on this movie for one thing and one thing only, it would have to be how underdeveloped the world feels. Beyond the Arena and Zeus’ night club, we don’t see a whole lot of how programs live on the Grid. Do they work? Do they have friends? Do they hang out? Are there (more) cities out there? The movie also hints at the possibility of some rebel movement forming against Clu but it’s pretty short-lived. These are all aspects that a sequel should definitely try to explore and, indeed, one eventually did.

Unfortunately, the year is 2018 and there’s currently no light at the end of the tunnel for a future TRON 3. It’s possible Disney dismissed its attempt to reboot the franchise as a failure considering the movie was only able to gross $400 million worldwide with a production budget of $170 million, and that’s not counting marketing expenses. Of course, if one considers Legacy was a sequel to a rather niche 1982 movie, maybe it didn’t do half as bad. Not having watched the original, I do believe Legacy managed to bring back some of the old cast of characters and do them justice, unlike a certain other franchise that shall not be named. It saddens me that Disney has apparently abandoned this property, and that the likelihood of seeing Olivia Wilde, Garrett Hedlund, Bruce Boxleitner, and why not Cillian Murphy as well (he was seriously underused in this movie), return for one last chapter seems like a pipe dream right now. Yet two years after the release of TRON: Legacy, Disney would give the franchise another chance to prove its worth with the release of the animated series, TRON: Uprising. Did it succeed at this? Stay tuned for Part 2 to find out. Why not watch TRON: Legacy in the meantime?

[gay-jesus-probably]

Pls talk about your Tron & Rinzler are different personalities headcanon because that's a headcanon of mine too & I saw your post in the tron legacy tag && got rly excited that someone else has that headcanon ahaa

Anon, I will gladly talk about this FOREVER.

Okay so first of all, let me just address the fact that yeah. I know. There is literally no evidence whatsoever in canon for this. But yknow. Rinzler says about nine words total, so whatever’s going on in his head is not going to be shared in a movie. If Legacy was done on a written medium (book or comic) Rinzler probably would have gotten at least one or two scenes from his perspective. But it’s a movie, and we don’t even have facial expressions, so we need to fill in the blanks ourselves of how he gets from ‘loyal enforcer’ to ‘I FIGHT FOR THE USERS’.

And for the record, I’d like to just say that the entire reason I have this headcanon at all is the fic Domestic by tehkittykat on Ao3, the plot of it being that Alan finds what he thinks is Tron dying in the Grid after the events of the movie, repairs him, brings him out into the real world, but upon waking up we find that surprise Tron’s long dead it’s literally just Rinzler, and the plot follows him settling in to the User world, and dealing with the aftermath of like everything from Clu. If you haven’t read it, go read it.

So preamble done with, let’s get into the real meta.

So in the post Anon’s referencing (this one) I mention that I think Tron and Rinzler are separate personalities, and basically different people, due to them having vastly different fighting styles and behaviour. And I believe that for a variety of reasons. I mean for a start, Rinzler can’t possibly be basically just a really fancy black guard. He’s not a standard re-purposed program. First of all, there’s the glaring problem. Tron wasn’t coded by Kevin Flynn. He was made by Alan Bradley. Kevin Flynn is the kind of man who spontaneously wanders out into the wastelands and makes the most important program on the Grid with a fucking mirror or whatever. He’s got all the raw talent and creativity, but not the focus and drive. Wheras on the flip side, it’s canon somewhere that Tron started being programmed two years before the events of the movie. And that the entire thing was Alan’s very slow ultimate gambit to take out the MCP, with plan A being Tron is completed and deletes MCP for being dangerous, and plan B being Tron is deleted by MCP, and the MCP going after independent security gives Alan all the proof he needs to pull the plug from the outside. Heads I win, tails you lose. And he spent two years working on it, apparently covering his ass with a paper trail (”Yes Mr. Dillinger I sent you a memo on my Tron project”), and also got in good with Gibbs to stop him from getting fired without reason. My point is, Alan Bradley is damn meticulous, and Tron’s coding definitely reflects that. So when it comes to repurposing, the standard work we see in Uprising wouldn’t be enough. Clu probably had to manually overwrite Tron’s code, and it probably was a long and frustrating process. Flynn’s coding probably has holes. Alan’s, not so much.

So, that’s the first reason. Rinzler would have to be much more complex than any black guard, because Tron’s coding would be deeply confusing and borderline alien to Clu, and much more meticulously written than any other program on the Grid, including Clu. I’d imagine if an ISO or User was ever repurposed, it would be the same story, on account of them being fundamentally different from anything Clu is used to.

Second of all, as I’ve mentioned, the biggest clue (no pun intended) is the fighting style. Just look at Tron fighting in the original, Uprising, and the flashback in Legacy. He stays planted on the ground. He’s not flipping around, either with an audience or without. Wheras Rinzler, as we all know, might as well be flying for all he stays on the ground. The man is made of unnecessary acrobatics, and let’s all be honest here it’s fucking awesome. But it’s about as far removed from Tron’s style as you can get. I mean obviously, both are getting the same badassery ranking, but Tron’s more of a ‘straightforwards brute strength’ style, while Rinzler is a ‘momentum and using opponents own actions against them’ kind of fighter. Both damn good, but very different. Rinzler’s ridiculously dynamic. And he’s like that the entire movie. A few meta posts suggest that he was programmed by Clu to drag out arena fights with his acrobatic style, but that’s only really taking in mind the arena fight against Sam. We do see him fight again, against Quorra on the Recitifier, and against Sam and Quorra on the Throneship. There’s no audience for those fights, and more importantly, there’s no Clu. If Rinzler was going to switch back to Tron’s sharp, efficient style, that would be the time. But instead, he sticks with the flipping, and handles things in the same style. Sure, he does it a lot faster, but that’s probably because Sam in the arena was being approached as ‘goddamn idiot walked right into this, might as well fuck with him first’, while Sam and Quorra later on are both taken as ‘this is serious lets get this shit over with quickly’. I feel like if it was just a badly corrupted Tron in there, he’d switch back to his normal fighting style the second Clu wasn’t watching. Muscle memory and all, or whatever the program equivalent is. But he doesn’t, because that was never Rinzler’s style to begin with.

And overall, just. Experience. I think it’s unanimously agreed that Rinzler does not have access to Tron’s memories, and is not supposed to, because you really don’t want your brainwashed enforcer to remember how much he hates you. That’s just common sense. So, even if Rinzler started out as just a brainwashed and corrupted Tron, he’s around for roughly 20 years, give or take however long Uprising lasts. And time moves slower in the Grid, so it’s more like over a thousand years by their standards I think. My point is, Tron’s around for about nine human years, Rinzler’s around for about twenty. Even if they’re not a split personality, Tron’s going to come out of the whole experience more Rinzler than Tron (AND WE ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERING HIM DYING AT THE END OF THE MOVIE THEY DON’T SPECIFICALLY SHOW HIM DEREZZING SO HE’S ALIVE AS FAR AS I CARE FUCK YOU). And really, Clu is Clu. There’s no fucking way Rinzler had a safe and supportive enviroment during that 20-ish years. The man tortured and brainwashed him, and as we see, has some stunning anger issues. I think it’s a unanimous fandom agreement that Clu was majorly abusive towards Rinzler, because there’s no risk of retaliation, nobody to stop him, and Clu’s already got Issues over Tron. I mean, just re-watch Legacy (it’s on Netflix), and pay close attention to Rinzler’s body language. His posture becomes hunched over and submissive whenever Clu’s in the scene with him. He looks like he wants to bolt sometimes. It’s subtle, but the staging and body language definitely implies some very not good things happening to Rinzler during pretty much his entire life. So even if there’s no split personality to start with, Tron was used to either loyally serving a caring higher power (Alan, Flynn, and pre-coup Clu) or fighting against a tyrannical oppressor (MCP and post-coup Clu). His relationship with figures of authority was either something positive, or something openly antagonistic that he openly fought against. And on the flip side, Rinzler only ever served under Clu. He didn’t have the option to leave the abusive situation, or even openly resist it. His only options would have been to endure, and to quietly manipulate events and people to protect himself. Like, during the scene where he’s dragging Quorra off to what is implied to be some very fucking horrifying things? Rinzler doesn’t show any hesitation at all, and I’m willing to bet that his thought process is something along the lines of ‘if Clu’s focusing on her, he’s not paying attention to me’, because that’s what abusive situations do to your head. Everything comes down to survival, and protecting yourself. Your priorities shift dramatically, because they have to, or you’re not going to make it. Ironically, the best way to survive abuse is to pick up abusive traits to defend yourself, and there’s nothing wrong with protecting yourself from your abuser, the real struggle is trying to get rid of the abusive traits once you get out. Rinzler’s likely about as far away from Tron’s ‘holy paladin’ type as possible. They may not have been a split personality at first, but they would inevitably get there just from the vastly different lives and experiences. It’s nature vs. nurture.

As for Rinzler not talking, it’s kind of annoying that we never get a canon explanation for that. Personally, I figure that it’s either ‘severe damage to the talking parts makes speech painful and difficult’, or ‘Clu has ordered Rinzler to only speak when absolutely necessary’. Or possibly some combination of the two. Either way, it means we just don’t get Rinzler’s view on the matter, which deeply upsets me. Because, as I’ve mentioned, Legacy treats Rinzler like shit, a writer deserves to be slapped for the line “Tron, what have you become”, and my husband needs to be saved.

In summary, read Domestic, fuck the Legacy writers, Rinzler and Tron are different personalities, and if anyone wants to know my full opinions on what the fuck was up between Rinzler and Clu just ask because a full examination of that one is going to need it’s own post and a nice assortment of trigger warnings.

and I meant to go to bed and answer this in the morning but i kept writing this in my head so i gave up and got up to write this. i’m going to bed now. ur welcome everybody.