#coder: flynn

[focusontheheart]

Meet the Team - Flynn

You can also find @farthaz on: Twitter @ farthaz

I’ve been playing Horizon since 2020 when I bought HZD, and fell in love with the franchise. But just recently I joined the fandom during the first months of 2023 looking for a way to express my love for the games. My coding career started as a hobby in 2019 and I focus more on data analysis. When I saw this project I decided to test and use my skills to create something for one of my favorite games and its incredible fandom.

See the Q&A with Flynn under the cut!

What is something you’ve always wanted to create for fandom? 

I always wanted to create something inclusive and that helps bring people together. This is the perfect way!

What are some of your favorite tropes to write, draw, or read?

I like to write and read all kinds of ships… And admire people’s drawings lol.

What is an unexpected thing or fun fact about you?

Sometimes people IRL mistake me for a boy and lose their shit when I talk to them with my sweet girly voice lol

What has been your favorite thing about working on this project so far?

Getting to know so many talented folks from different countries and paths of life!

[yourleaderandbeacon]

A bit of food for thought and this came to me very late last night when I couldn't sleep. ( Mun regularly suffers from insomnia.)

Clu 2 is based on the Clu from the original movie. As in, they share the same base code. Flynn's written a few programs in terms of games. The man lives over an arcade.

Flynn's a lazy coder.

The original Clu, or at least the Clu Flynn used to clean up his credit score, was a hacking program. Could Clu 2 still have these abilities? Sure. If the Grid was actually connected to anything. Maybe Flynn knew what he was doing when he made it a closed system.

Clu 2 wouldn't know what happened to his Predecessor. He likely notices the 2.0 at some point in his code. Flynn evades the question since that happened before he knew the extent of what creating programs means. ( And I’m not sure he ever learns the full extent of what it means tbh. In the Old System/Encom the programs regard their Users as something Divine. Grid programs have that ideal at first but the majority become disillusioned in Flynn by Legacy.

( The mun sees more of a father-son relationship between Flynn and Clu 2. And there are parallels between Sam and Clu 2. )

Should Clu 2 ever learn what happened to the original I think would further sour his opinion of Flynn as a Creator and User.

[fights4users]

From what I remember, the MCP itself seems to regard Users and human beings as separate categories. Does this mean that only people who write code are considered to be gods by programs? Further, does this also mean only coders have "User Powers"?

I don’t think so? As he talks broadly “I can run things a million times better” etc, he says ‘man’ as in mankind but I don’t think he separates the too.

I don’t think so here either, in the post I mentioned how Crom (and ram too likely) has a completely regular person as his User. I doubt Mr.Henderson the branch manager has any idea of coding. I think “User” just refers to anyone who… well… uses a computer and they’d come into contact with- which is why I talked about the “Maker” specification and why it would overlap when it comes to Tron,Yori, Sark and the MCP.

Honestly I don’t think programs would even know what a human is/that users are human because it’s not like they’d have contact or knowledge of anyone who doesn’t use a computer.

However, programmers might have the potential to be the only ones with “User power” I saw a post awhile back saying how Flynn’s likely to have survived for so long/was able to come back because he knew so much about computers and I’m inclined to believe that. Especially in the 80s when it was a very niche hobby and job.

[evecolourshock]

Clu hesitated, putting the smallest of nods in Eve's shoulder, too wrung out to really protest and honestly just wanting to go back to sleep.

"Okay, little light." Eve murmured. She guided Clu into sitting down, wrapping his heat pad around him and getting him to rest against her. "Alright. I'm only going to look, I promise. No changes."

Clu's code was, to her eyes, a mess. Flynn was a bad coder anyway, or more accurately a lazy one, but this-

There were elements that were vaguely User-ish. Bits that were clearly new, in Flynn's distinctive... Eve was hesitant to call it a style.

And buried under all of it were two distinct cores, fragmented and intertwined so utterly there would be no separating them. Both of them older than Eve herself.

One a brave, determined, defiant hacker ready and willing to take on the world - cut down too soon, ripped apart to his most base functions, resurrected so cruelly and callously full deletion would have been kinder.

And the other?

Eve held in a snarl through sheer force of will, refusing to scare Clu further. That was the source of his Admin code, the blueprint he had to direct how he was supposed to work.

That was a Dillinger Admin-level program, or what was left of one. And not one written by her Eddie.

And the only one she could think of was the MCP itself.

@not-that-dillinger Continued from here because it apparently doesn't want me to reblog it...

Nitro shuddered softly. "There's... two kinds of reprogramming." He explained haltingly. "That we have experience with, at least."

"One's... medical, I guess. Repairing damage, making improvements, averting obsolescence... all done by Users or trained Medic Programs. Good thing, if a bit... disconcerting when you're not used to it."

"The other's Clu's specialty. He calls it rectifying. It's... it's hacking, I guess, given a fancy name, but it's so much worse than being infected with a Virus or a User breaking in to edit a Program's function without access rights allowing them to."

"It strips away everything that makes someone who they are. Memories, functions, personality, thoughts, hopes, dreams... all gone." Nitro looked away, clenching his fist. "He did it to so many. Friends became enemies in... well. Fractions of a second for you, our equivalent of minutes. Hundreds, if not thousands, wiped clean except for what he wanted to turn them into. Disposable armies, mostly. Bodies to throw at what few held out against him. He- even Tron was brought down eventually. Our stronghold, Eve, my kids... we're the last of the resistance, maybe forty fighters strong, the rest all refugees. It- for all I know, it could be just me now."

[invalidtumbls]

De-rezzed in the Second Act

So, I have this weird habit: I am fascinated not by perfect stories, but those that start well and fall apart for no particularly good reason. I remember seeing Atlantis: The Lost Empire in the theater and being carried away by the efficient setup in the first 20 minutes, only to hit a point when things slow down and thinking “wait, when did this suddenly start to suck?”

I hear ya Vinny. I’m bored too.

The problem, as story theorists know, is second act trouble. It’s that problem of the long middle of the story where initial enthusiasm fades, attention drifts, and momentum fails.

Well, that’s what it does when you’ve got second act trouble, anyways. Obviously, some movies/games/shows don’t have this problem, because they don’t have a defective second act. Nobody in 1977 came out of Star Wars saying “man, that stuff on board the Death Star went on way too long.”

Anyways, let’s define our terms. Three-act structure splits the story into three parts:

Setup — Introduce the characters and the situation. An inciting incident gets the ball rolling, ultimately leading to the first plot point, where an irreversible change occurs and the conflict begins.

Conflict — The protagonist attempts to achieve their goal, dealing with a progression of complications that arise naturally from each of their actions along the way. Eventually, this leads to the second plot point, at which the back-and-forth of the main conflict cannot continue, and a conclusion (for good or ill) must be reached.

Resolution — A new, final conflict ends the story, with the protagonist succeeding or failing (or, sometimes, a combination of both, like discovering the thing they originally wanted and have now attained isn’t what they actually need).

Thing is, these aren’t divvied up in tidy one-third portions. In practice, the acts are in more of a 25%-50%-25% split, or 20-50-30 if you go by the Scriptnotes podcast’s t-shirt. Author K. M. Weiland has an extraordinary site for story theorists that breaks all the key moments (or beats) of this structure into blogs, podcasts, and compilation books.

So, after seeing YouTube videos of the cool new Tron roller coaster at Disney World, I was reminded of 2010's Tron Legacy, the would-be franchise-relaunching, torch-passing, sci-fi film that basically did none of those things. It's another film that I remember deflates about halfway through, so I thought it would be worth a rewatch to see where it goes wrong.

This being a sequel to 1982’s Tron, you’d figure some the audience would need a reminder of the first film, since it had been been 28 years. You could just watch the first movie, but… surprise… Disney let it quietly go out of print in the year or two prior to the debut of Tron Legacy. Corporate incompetence? I’d argue quite the opposite: whatever you think of the original Tron, it’s not as good as you remember. To modern eyes, it’s clunky, talky, and slow, and certainly can’t coast on the power of its dated special effects. Chance are, if 2010 audiences could have gone back to watch Tron, they’d have been less likely to get tickets to Tron Legacy. Which is why I think Disney drained the retail market of Tron DVDs on purpose. After all, they were perfectly happy to issue a Blu-Ray of "Tron: The Original Classic" once Legacy had finished its theatrical run and got its home media release.

Come for the space frisbees, stay for the Wendy Carlos soundtrack that you remember from the arcade game.

So, instead, Tron Legacy opens with a scene of a digitally de-aged Jeff Bridges — well, a digitally de-aged back of Jeff Bridges’ head — reprising the character of Kevin Flynn, the protagonist of the first movie, a coder who went inside the computer called “The Grid” to defeat evil programs. He tells his son about how he fought alongside the heroic program “Tron”, and created another program named “Clu” to care for The Grid in Flynn’s absence. That’s basically everything you need to know from the first movie. All the other details — Sark, the MCP, Yori, Dumont — none of it matters. See how much time you saved by not rewatching it?

Next scene: info-dump. A news story reports Kevin Flynn’s disappearance, as it plays out over footage of the lonely, and increasingly troubled young Sam Flynn. It moves fast enough, and it’s fine for what it is.

Now, though, we are six minutes into the movie and don’t really know the protagonist. A 10-minute action sequence takes care of that. With an implicit timeskip, we see the young adult Sam speeding on his motorcycle, escaping the police, and breaking into the corporate tower of his father’s former company, which is having a board meeting to announce their new operating system. This is one of the already-dated bits of Tron Legacy: the now-evil version of ENCOM is a pretty obvious expy for Microsoft, as it prepares to launch its new operating system with a high new price tag and no new features.

When Apple did this, they called it “Snow Leopard” and everyone thought it was great. Shouldn’t we cut ENCOM a break?

I don’t think this bit lands today like it did just 13 years ago. People under 35 don’t recall Microsoft’s cutthroat monopoly days and mostly just know Microsoft as the Xbox company, not that different from Sony or Nintendo. An evil computer company today would probably be portrayed as directly creeping on its users, like Google or Facebook, or perhaps an Apple-style aesthetic dictatorship. Maybe with an Elon Musk caricature because, man, that dude is creepy.

As the board meeting continues, Sam sneaks into a server room and starts hacking, narrowly avoiding a security guard. As the board goes to launch their new OS, Sam’s hack reveals itself as a looping video of a barking dog, despite the “world-class security” claimed by the company. Better yet, Flynn’s last remaining loyalist at the company, Alan (the creator of the original “Tron” program), discovers that Sam’s hack has released the OS for free on the web.

At the top of the building, the security guard reaches Sam as he stands atop a crane. Sam, as the main shareholder in the company, justifies his hack as stealing from himself… then jumps off the building. Halfway down, he opens a parachute to complete his daring escape… except that he gets caught in a traffic light on the way down and the cops catch him.

Fifteen minutes into the film and Garret Hedlund is almost effortlessly charming. Pity it doesn’t last.

After bailing out of jail, Sam returns to his home — a makeshift bachelor pad built of stacked shipping containers — to find Alan waiting for him with news: Alan received an alert from a pager left to him by Kevin Flynn 20 years ago. From a long-since disconnected number.

Bruce Boxleitner has such a low-key charm, it’s a shame we didn’t see him in more stuff. Although now I’m sure you’re all going to tell me to watch Babylon 5, aren’t you?

Sam laughs off the idea that his father is waiting for him at the old arcade, but eventually rides over to check it out. Finding a secret room behind the “Tron” machine, Sam discovers Kevin’s office, and after a few ill-considered commands at the terminal, he gets zapped into The Grid.

So, in 20 minutes, there’s Act I. The essentials, from a story perspective:

Protagonist: Sam Flynn, genius hacker, prankster, lost-boy-without-a-father-figure trope.

The hook: Can Sam figure out what happened to Kevin Flynn all those years ago, and find him? And could doing so set things right both with Sam and the company?

The inciting event: Alan receives a page from Flynn’s pager, and lets Sam know.

First plot point: Sam is zapped into The Grid, the world inside the computer.

All told, this is really good. The movie efficiently gets us on board with a fun, exciting protagonist, and gives him a compelling purpose. You’d figure we’re in for a good time at this point.

(Reader, we are not in for a good time.)

OK, so Act II. There’s lots to do in the second act — it’s half the running time after all — so it’s helpful to break it down more granularly. Weiland writes, “[the] first half of the second act is where your characters find the time and space to react to the first major plot point.” Since the plot point was getting zapped into The Grid, it makes sense that the reaction — Sam’s first order of business — is figuring out where he is and what do to do. So we start with a five-minute sequence of Sam immediately being captured by the authorities, outfitted with his Tron-land uniform and identity disc, and brought to the game grid.

I hadn’t realized until this rewatch that Sam being pinned down by the Recognizer’s searchlight is a callback to when the police helicopter gets him back in Act I.

From here, we go into what everyone expects from the Tron movies: the videogame stuff. Sam immediately ends up in “Disc Wars”, the gladiatorial death frisbee from the first movie, albeit with updated effects. Using his innate athleticism and cleverness, he survives to a faceoff with the champion Rinzler, who wounds Sam and realizes from a blood drop that Sam is not a program, but a user. A mysterious figure lording over the games demands that Sam be brought to him.

As Sam is ferried up to the throne room, the mysterious figure reveals himself as the spitting image of the 35-year-old Kevin Flynn. Sam greets his dad and insists they go home, only to be told the leader isn’t Kevin Flynn after all. Sam realizes that this is Clu, a program that Flynn created (owing to the Tron convention that programs resemble the person who created them).

The convention of programs resembling their “users” also speaks to the mainframe-era idioms of the original Tron, when a user and programmer were one and the same, typically someone who wrote a program to solve computational problems for themselves.

Clu sends Sam back out to the game grid, presumably to die in combat in the lightcycle game. So, shut off your brain, we get another zippy five-minute action sequence. It’s playing out just like the original Tron at this point in the second act, arguably better because Act I established Sam’s motorcycle skills, so the lightcycle action sequence and his success in it is actually motivated by his character.

40 minutes in and he’s still charming. If only it had lasted.

Despite being outgunned by opponents with better equipment, Sam leads his team and puts up a solid fight. Eventually though, dirty tricks kill off his compatriots, leaving Sam with a wrecked bike and facing certain doom at the edge of Clu's outstretched disc. Suddenly, a four-wheeler bursts onto the grid and rescues Sam. The driver wrecks most of the pursuing lightcycles, then blasts a hole in the arena to escape to a barren outland beyond the grid, where the pursuers’ vehicles can’t operate. Removing her helmet, the driver introduces herself as Quorra, promising that Sam’s questions will be answered in due course.

Things slow down as the car weaves its way through hidden passages to a secret lair. Quorra brings Sam inside an elegant home, where a solitary figure resides in a seated meditation.

For those of you keeping track, the Blu-Ray is at 48 minutes, 30 seconds, and the movie is about to fall apart, though we don’t know it yet.

We’re now approaching the midpoint of the second act, and thus, the midpoint of the movie itself. This is a separate phase of the second act, one that is uniquely situated to keep the story from flagging. That is, if you actually do something with it. As Weiland writes:

The midpoint is what keeps your second act from dragging. It’s what caps the reactions in the first half of the book and sets up the chain of actions that will lead the characters into the climax. In many ways, the midpoint is like a second inciting event. Like the first inciting event, it directly influences the plot. It changes the paradigm of the story. And it requires a definitive and story-altering response from the characters.

So, a good story probably wants to do something big at the midpoint, something that changes the stakes, changes the conflict, and forces the protagonist to act. Revelations! Betrayal! Explosions! The good stuff!

Tron Legacy, by comparison, sits down to have dinner.

What’s wrong, Quorra? You haven’t had any of your uncannily realistic roast pig.

The reunion scenes with Sam and (Kevin) Flynn stretch out for about 15 minutes… a full one-eighth of the movie. It’s all dialogue, much of it while seated. That’s already tough to make dramatic. What’s even harder to chew through is a staggering amount of info-dumping:

Sam insists they leave the Grid together, but Flynn says it’s impossible.

Awkwardly, Sam and Flynn try to catch up over the lost years, but it turns to why Flynn didn’t return. Flynn explains the discovery of the “Isos”, isomorphic algorithms, a spontaneously-generated digital life form that could change the world.

As Flynn's story turns to flashback, Clu sees the Isos as a corruption of the perfect system Flynn created him to build, and stages a coup against Flynn. Tron (apparently) dies defending Flynn, who flees into exile to escape. With no one left to stop him, Clu commits genocide against the Isos, wiping them out in one stroke.

The portal between The Grid and the real world closes, trapping Flynn within. It can only be opened from the outside, meaning Sam’s entry has opened it.

Flynn suspects that Clu is organizing something, and that he wants the power of Flynn’s identity disc. Flynn reveals that he didn’t send the page to Alan, meaning that Clu must have done so, as a means of laying a trap to lure out Flynn.

Yeah yeah, I was around in the 80s. I remember “War Games” too.

It’s kind of a chore to get through all of this material. It’s good for the story to breathe after the action of the game grid, but 15 minutes is probably too much. And to be fair, this does meet one of the requirements of the midpoint: it changes the protagonist’s goals and actions. Sam realizes he can’t convince Flynn to come with him to the portal. Instead, as he explains to Quorra, if he can just get to the portal himself, then out in the real world he can delete Clu with just a keystroke. Quorra thinks about it, then gives him the contact information for “Zuse”, a program who can get anyone to anywhere. Sam takes this information, steals Flynn’s old lightcycle, and heads back into the Grid.

We are now at one hour, five minutes into the movie, and believe it or not, this is the last time in the movie that our protagonist will take action entirely on his own. But more on that later.

Sam meets a female program who takes him to the End of the Line Club to meet Zuse, through an intermediary named Castor. Meanwhile, Clu's forces find the lightcycle and trace it back to Flynn’s hidden lair. Sam negotiates with Castor (who turns out to be Zuse himself) for transport to the portal, but is betrayed when it all turns out to have been a trap and Clu’s forces crash in from above. This kicks off a big bar fight sequence — the first action in nearly a half-hour at this point — with Quorra arriving to help protect Sam.

The Daft Punk cameo is a cute touch, since the soundtrack they created is quite likely the most enduring and best thing about the film. It’s a pity the Blu-Ray doesn’t have a music-only audio track, because then you could turn the entire movie into a two-hour Daft Punk music video.

The fight goes badly, with Sam overwhelmed and Quorra losing an arm to one of Clu’s goons before Flynn arrives to use his convenient god-like powers to turn the tide of the fight. He urges Sam to escape with the wounded Quorra to the elevator, but as they leave, one of Clu’s minions steals Flynn’s identity disc: exactly what Flynn has tried to prevent all these years.

Flynn and Sam steal a solar sailer and set off, Flynn reluctantly agreeing to Sam’s plan to make a rush to the portal. With the in-flight downtime, Flynn starts to use his magical user power to start healing Quorra. As Sam watches Flynn work, he realizes the truth: Quorra is an Iso, in fact, the last surviving Iso.

And this pause gives us an opportunity to bring up something about Tron Legacy: what is the point of this entire exercise? Ideally, a good story should have a theme that it expresses. The title gives us a hint: "legacy", things left behind by previous generations.

There's a really interesting idea when you think about it: Flynn basically has three children in this story:

Sam, his biological human son.

Clu, the program he created literally in his own image.

Quorra, his adoptive Iso daughter.

…and it doesn’t really do anything with that idea. Clu is motivated not by his resentment of Sam (or Quorra, if he’s even aware of her), but by his political ambitions to create a perfect world. Sam arrives to see Quorra living with Flynn and doesn’t for a second consider the idea he’s been effectively replaced by her in his father’s concerns and affections. If anything, the movie wants us to see a spark of romantic interest between Sam and Quorra, and if years of watching anime on Crunchyroll has taught me anything, it’s to never fuck your sister, even if you’re not blood-related.

(Looks up suddenly, taps earpiece.) Uh, Wolf, I’m getting word that what anime actually says is to always fuck your sister. Back to you in Atlanta.

The scene of Flynn magically healing Quorra’s disintegrated arm also brings up what a missed opportunity this is. Between these three characters, they chose the least interesting option. To wit, could Sam heal Quorra? We’ve seen he’s got 1337 4ax0r 5k1llz back in Act I; does that give him magical abilities inside The Matrix The Grid? Do all users have that, or is it just Flynn?

Turn it around another way: what if it’s Flynn or Sam who gets injured. Can Quorra heal them? Flynn tells us that the Isos are these fascinating creatures who are going to reshape the real world, but we never see anything like that. Quorra is at best a quality Action Girl, but nothing she does in the story appears to have any relevance to her identity as an Iso. It’s another failure to “show, don’t tell”, in a movie that does an heck of a lot of telling to begin with.

Moreover, this sequence is taking us to the end of Act II. Citing Weiland again, this post-midpoint section is supposed to set up the protagonist for his or her final actions in Act III.

Because the second half of the second act will lead right into the slugfest of the climax, this is the author’s last chance to get all his playing pieces into position. We have to set up the line of dominoes that will knock into the final major plot point at the 75% mark, and we do that by creating a series of actions from the main character. Although he’s not likely to be in control of the situation, he’s at least moving forward and calling a few shots of his own, instead of taking it and taking it from the antagonistic force.

Tron Legacy has an even worse problem than the protagonist sitting back and taking it. Over the course of the last 10 minutes or so, Sam has been all but replaced as the protagonist by Flynn. Following the fiasco at the club, Flynn is the one driving the action (stopping the falling elevator in the escape from the club, healing Quorra) and providing all the information to drive us to the third act. Sam has been just going along with it, suddenly demoted to damn near sidekick status in the The Jeff Bridges Show Starring Jeff Bridges, with Special Guest Star Digitally De-Aged Jeff Bridges. Also appearing: Garret Hedlund and Olivia Wilde. And it's only going to get worse in Act III.

But before we get to Act III, there are two completely unnecessary scenes that drag even more momentum from a story that’s already at a virtual standstill:

Back at the End of Line Club, Castor/Zuse negotiates with Clu over Flynn’s identity disc. Clu coerces him into handing it over, then his minions bomb the club, killing Zuse inside. It’s now been almost 15 minutes since the breakout from the club, and the lead characters are long gone. Why should we care about Zuze? And if the point is to remind us that Clu is a cold-blooded murderer… um, I think we got that when he exterminated all the Isos.

On the solar sailer, Quorra tells Sam the story of how Flynn rescued her from The Purge that killed the Isos. She asks Sam what a sunrise is like, and he describes it in romantic terms as he briefly looks into her eyes. This could be a charming moment that lets the story breathe, if it weren’t for the fact that this whole second act has been largely sitting on its ass for nearly an hour.

No. Just no, OK? Don’t even think it, Sam Flynn.

At one hour, thirty two minutes into the film, we now head into Act III. The solar sailer arrives unexpectedly at an industrial facility, rather than the portal. The trio finds barges of kidnapped, zombified programs, who they realize are being amassed into an army by Clu. As they skulk about the facility, Quorra gives her disc to Flynn and makes a run for it. While she's easily captured by Rinzler, her distraction allows Flynn and Sam to further infiltrate the facility.

Plot point two, in screenplay theory, puts an end to the the conflict of Act II and forces the conclusion that will play out in Act III. Here, it comes in the form of Clu’s speech to his army, in which he reveals his plan: he will use the army he has created and take it through the portal, using Flynn’s identity disc, to conquer the real world.

Straight-up Triumph of the Will here, because Hitler Is Bad is the easiest point in the world to make.

The conflict of the second act was Sam trying to get back to the real world, preferably with Flynn in tow. Now that they know Clu’s plan, they can’t just run away. They have a new goal: Clu must be stopped here, on The Grid. That’s what takes us into Act III.

Well, for what it’s worth of course. We burned an hour in Act II not doing very much action-wise, not doing anything thematically, and spending just a staggering amount of time in flashback info-dumps. The momentum has fizzled, and this movie wouldn't be saved by Act III even if it were great.

As it is, Sam and Flynn split up, with Flynn getting an escape ship ready while Sam makes an all-too-easy trip up to the throne room to recover Quorra and the disc. Seriously, Flynn’s disc is the most important thing in the world and you’ve got like three guards? It’s a pretty rote action scene that takes less than three minutes of screen time, and that’s with intercutting to Clu finishing his speech and reacting to an alarm when the disc goes missing.

As the trio take off in a stolen lightplane — with Quorra driving, Sam shooting, and Flynn calling the shots (because he’s all but the protagonist at this point) — they get chased by Clu, Rinzler, and their goons, basically replaying the lightcycle sequence, but now it’s flying.

And the thing about this is, the action doesn’t really lean on anything specific to Sam or Quorra that’s been established earlier in the movie. There’s one line about how Sam’s glider-assisted escape from the throne ship tower is a trick he learned a few nights prior at ENCOM Tower. But there’s nothing really thematically about Sam, who he is, what he values, how he solves problems — no “use the Force, Luke” moment — because the prior two acts never really set any of that up. So what’s left now is pew-pew CGI light show.

At least they should have gotten a good PS4 game out of this, right?

Dispatching the pursuers — including Rinzler, who turns out to be the corrupted Tron in a subplot that feels like it just barely escaped being left on the cutting room floor — the trio reaches the portal, only to find Clu waiting to confront them. So now, with Clu standing between them and their goal, does Sam take the role of the protagonist and vanquish the antagonist once and for all? Does he deliver the thematic truth, proving the righteousness of his world-view, and putting a bow on the whole point of the story?

What, are you kidding? No, of course not. Because this is Tron Legacy. Flynn does it instead.

If you squint, you can just barely see the putative protagonist, out of focus in the background.

Flynn offers a reconciliation; Clu rejects it Because Evil. After a brief fight, Clu retakes Flynn's disc, only to discover he's been tricked by a switcheroo and is holding Quorra's disc, while Sam and Quorra make their escape with the real disc. Clu attempts to stop them, forcing Flynn to use his Magical User Power to merge with Clu, seemingly killing them both, or at least reducing them to a little glowing light, which match-dissolves to Sam back in the real world, saving something (possibly Flynn’s data) to a USB stick.

After this climax, there’s just wrap-up bits of falling action in the real world to whip through before the credits. Sam finds Alan at the arcade, telling him to meet tomorrow morning at ENCOM Tower to retake the company. And we end with a cute shot — even if so much of the film doesn’t work, it is a lovely note to end on — of Sam on his motorcycle giving a now-human Quorra a ride and showing her the sunrise.

For the last time, Sam, do not bang your de facto stepsister.

So, what have we learned? I’d argue that the problems of the second act that doom the film aren’t just that not enough happens. That kind of audience-gets-bored-easily thinking is what gets us more dumb, loud movies. I think the problem of the second act is that it loses track of what the story was supposed to be about, if it ever had a point at all. The story raises a question of what would happen if the son ever finds his long-lost father inside the computer, but never settled on a good answer before they started banging out pages. And with no point to the whole exercise, there’s no natural pull of where the story should go. Perhaps it’s inevitable that Flynn ends up stealing the movie from Sam, because there’s no answer, no conclusion, that Sam’s story is working towards.

Still, the movie got one thing right: ORIGINAL MUSIC BY DAFT PUNK.

It’s a widely acknowledged truth that the Tron Legacy soundtrack is the best coding music ever created. As a software engineer, I can confirm.

[tangledbea]

About the job ask, I get what you mean about Eugene being a gamer (or in my opinion, a lawyer - y'know good looks and guile!), but I think he would have quit that career after meeting Rapunzel. What do you think he would be doing afterwards? He's got a lot of strong points, but he's not really good with given instructions. Technically, he's a "gym teacher"/trainer, because he trains the guards by making them chase him around, and I can see him doing something similar to that.

Yeah, but he doesn’t train them in such a way that would translate well to the same job in a modern setting. A gym trainer is at work for however many hours a day and stays in peak physical shape. I’ve pointed out before that he’s actually a little bit out of shape these days, and I don’t think he’d enjoy working with that many kids for that many hours a day every week for five days a week enough to even apply for a job like that.

Eugene’s always been something of a tough nut for me to crack in that regard. It’s way easier for me to find a Flynn Rider Days modern job for him (ransomware coder, black market merch dealer, YouTube parcour sensation, etc), but finding something that he’d be good at, is honest work, and he’d truly enjoy?

He doesn’t work well with an authority figure hanging over his head, so it seems to me it would need to be something that isn’t heavily supervised. He’d be his own boss, but doing what?

[allronix]

Give me a character meme: TRON

and I’ll break their ass down:

How I feel about this character

Oh, man. He was such a DORK in the 82 film. Such a good, sweet guy outside of a battle situation. But that’s the actor’s best charm - able to go from utter dork to badass and back again in about 5 seconds. Then you see Betrayal and Evolution, and you get this heaviness. He’s telling the truth, but Flynn is high on his own PR and busy gushing about Isos to really pay attention, and Tron gets treated with the same mild contempt as the rest of Flynn’s friends...only the poor guy pays for it more than his analog friends do. Guess the closer you are, the more you pay for it.

And Uprising? Shit. That scared me more than Rinzler. You know he’s not doing that willingly. But the lies to Beck, pushing people away, trying to kill Dyson? Yeah. dork Knight has left the building. Justified, given he’s a paladin who just realized the Gods he worshiped not only don’t give a shit, but haven’t for longer than he thought. However, seeing Tron unhinged kinda made me worried on a meta level about Alan. All that’s great about Tron and all that’s scary about the guy? That’s what’s rattling around in that meek, mild-looking guy? Note to fandom: Never piss Alan Bradley off.  

It was such an ignoble end, though. Okay, proves Alan is the better coder (and Flynn owes his ass an additional $20 on top of everything else) . Has enough of himself to hold back on Sam and Quorra. And for what? “What have you become?” (Stuff it, jackass. You had every reason to suspect Clu would pull something like this.) Then a suicidal charge that only slows that eight-bit spawn of a virus down. 

This is the title character of the franchise. What gives?

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Y’know, I write the guy as being almost single-target for Yori. The guy put his deity on hold to find her, make sure she was okay, and have a properly romantic night. That’s Rory Pond level of “born married.” (And one of the few bits in the franchise that screams “Disney” - little wonder it was chucked out come the sequels). However, I can kinda...only kinda see a Tron/Yori/Flynn setup done as a mildly pragmatic arrangement (”There’s no need for our User friend to crash from loneliness or to be without a unit while he’s here. Not when we can offer ourselves to help,” or a “If one of us dies, then go with him so someone is keeping you from self-terminate.”)  

Like a lot of the fandom, I have a suspicion Clu was taking advantage of the brainwashing. It would be more for the power than anything, a “look, I have the biggest badass in the system literally on his knees for me.” But you can’t really call that a “romantic” ship. More like “Team Bradley gets confirmation and it’s best for everyone Clu’s dead by that point.”

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Jury’s still out on if Beck is some random script from Flynn, or some de facto “son” or “nephew,” but they are terribly sweet when Tron isn’t in asshole mode. Seriously, you two. Stop resembling your Users. (well, a possible User in Beck’s case).

My unpopular opinion about this character

He has a massive case of crippling overspecialization. Rolling stats? We’re talking a, high Strength, a very high Dexterity, a crazy-high Constitution, decent Charisma, maybe some hard-earned Wisdom, but Intelligence is his dump stat. Outside of a combat situation, he’s surprisingly useless. He can fight, and he’s the BEST fighter out there. Maybe Mercury could go toe to toe with him in a straight brawl, judging from the GBA game. But that’s all he knows how to do. He’s not a good leader (he botched the power keg crowd in “Scars”, his advice to Beck to push away allies like Mara isn’t good for growing an insurrection), and everything but fighting was Yori’s department if you watch the 82 film. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Alan needed to know what a wonderful son he coded up. Lots of GREAT fanfic there, and thank goodness Alan is the Responsible Adult in the room. An additional? (Yes, I’m working on it) Team him up with Jet. Let them get on each others’ last nerves as only a couple brothers can manage only for a little grudging admiration on Tron’s part that while “Alan Two” is completely glitched, he actually is a pretty good fighter. 

[systemadministratorclu]

"Y-Yeah. I guess you're used to ding things the User way, because from what I've heard, all of us programs look like that Code you were showing us."

"Not sure if this might help, but I remember Flynn-sorry Clu-that other User said once that he used the way things are in his word as a sort of basis for the Grid and expanded on it." Quorra noticed how Clu flinched when she said Flynn's name and made a mental note to try and avoid saying it around him.

"You mean.....he made things look and sound and feel like they would in the User world. Because that's what he was familiar with........User? Do you think we could turn the code into an interface like the simulator controls. You might have noticed......nothing here uses coding terminals. Like, for energy, we just select a type and it dispenses it." It was like a soda fountain in the User world, not that Clu would've known what that was. But most of the people using Encom's products didn't know code either. They never even saw the raw code. They just saw the interface where they hit a button or selected an option and all the coding happened automatically. That seemed to be how the simulator controls worked. And Clu appeared to just think of the control console and it appeared.

It was like a project at Encom. Ed was the coder, and Clu was the typical customer who knew nothing about code, yet was able to use completed Encom products easily. Because rather than code, the customer was presented with an interface designed to be understood by non-coders.

send 🫂 to hold my muse while they have a panic attack.

(Found this in your archive and figured this is something my Clu might be pretty good at.)

The voicemail had been slowly gnawing a hole in Ed's mind all week, begging to be opened. The number was a dead giveaway he should have deleted it without listening to it the moment he got it, but of course he didn't. He hadn't seen that number in a decade, or heard the voice of it's owner in just as long, but he still knew it like the back of his hand.

His father's number.

It had come at the worst of times, when he and his team should have been focusing on finalizing the software for the deadline that Friday, except he couldn't stop thinking about the voicemail, couldn't focus on anything, and the rest of his team decided the week of a critical deadline was a good week to start infighting again.

He finally opened it that morning—Friday morning—resigned that he wasn't going to get anything done until he found out it was nothing or spent the day panicking over whatever his father decided was important enough to break a restraining order for.

Except that before he could process what had been said, Mackey showed up at his office demanding updates that Ed didn't have, and the vague threat that he'd "better have something ready to show the board tonight."

By some miracle, they had something to show the board by that evening, even if it was still full of bugs and nothing near where Ed would have liked.

By what could only have been cosmic irony, Ed didn't get a chance to show the board their software. Despite that, the meeting went about as well as Ed expected it to if he had, in the sense that he'd fallen through the thin ice he never seemed to be able to get off of.

He went for a walk after the meeting, knowing that going home was a bad idea, but not having anywhere else to go. He found himself at the old arcade, staring at it from across the street. It took him a moment to realize the door was open. A likely harmless mystery was as good a distraction as any, so he crossed the street, and slipped inside.

It didn't take him long to find Flynn's secret basement lab, or for him to find himself inside the computer (because that was absolutely Dr. Baines's digitization laser he'd shot himself with).

It didn't take them long to find him.

They took his clothes, then his glasses, and forced him in a skin-tight glowing suit.

Then they forced him into a cell with a view of... from what he could barely make out with his blurry vision, and what he could hear of the announcer over the sound of muffled screams from down the hall, were some sort of cyberpunk gladiatorial games. He had no idea if he would take the place of the person screaming down the hall, or one of the contestants, and would have preferred not to find out, but his brain finally decided that processing Father's voicemail and the fallout of the catastrophic board meeting was the better distraction from his current predicament.

He crumpled to the floor in a corner, feeling like someone was standing on his chest, his entire body shaking, and unable to draw breath into his lungs.

It took him a moment to process the sensation of strong arms around his waist, and his body cushioned in someone's lap.

He hadn't realized he wasn't alone in the cell. Had he been able to think clearly, he might have wondered if the stranger was there when they threw Ed in, or if they threw the stranger into the cell while Ed was panicking.

[possibilitiesofwyatt]

S1E1 “Pilot” Episode Rewatch Commentary

Here it goes!

Spoiler alert-- I am writing this after having watched the full season. 

Ok, I didn’t know much about the Hindenburg before this, so I read a short book about it and got a sense of its significance. 

Hey, we meet Lucy, giving what is probably a not-so-traditional history lecture, meant to show us what a great teacher she is, excited about history. Oh yes, Lucy is actually the only one who has another job (since Wyatt is assigned to the mission, and Rufus is well... in Mason Industries). I wonder whether they will come back to the thread that Lucy (whom we are told later has a fearsome reputation in her field) is being passed over for tenure-- a Rittenhouse conspiracy so that she can do something else?

And this episode is the only episode we actually see real Amy, but it was pretty short. But we know she is definitely in Lucy’s corner and she wants Lucy to “make her own future”! 

Ooh, mission control. It does look similar to the NASA mission control with all the computers facing the same view. And later everyone will clap when the lifeboat goes off, just like I saw in Apollo 13! Evil looking people about to attack it.. Ooh Matt Frewer! It’s been a while-- I used to watch him on Psi Factor and oh yes Sherlock Holmes. Oh, Taco Tuesday is a hint that Anthony is good (or at least conflicted) as he’s trying to get Rufus and Jiya out of the building before Flynn arrives. But Flynn must be a little ahead of schedule... 

I find it hard to believe that they didn’t have paperweights before this...  but it did make a good comedic moments for a couple of episodes. 

And Lucy gets the call! Arrives at scary Mason Industries building late at night with perfect makeup. Her uptight manner contrasts with the dude chilling on the seat across, our first look at Wyatt Logan. Yes, introduce us to these characters through Agent Christopher. Abigail Spencer doing a good job of showing Lucy’s awkwardness (running gag that shows the show not taking itself too seriously, which I like. Most memorable when Lucy is trying to rescue Wyatt in S1E6). 

Expository stuff about Garcia Flynn and time travel... we don’t have to get too technical here. Skepticism slowly having to melt to belief.. and isn’t it great that the CPUs of the two machines are connected! Lucky them. Lucy is really smart! Just by seeing the date and place she knows where they have gone... but no one knows why...Lucy runs away from the madness, but we know she’s going to get into the machine.   

“I think someone who loved history would want to save it”... but a historian doesn’t necessarily always want what has happened before to happen again, right? Oh, but it’s the chance to actually see history that makes Lucy change her mind. Later Agent Christopher says... “Don’t be noticed... don’t change anything...” But I never really felt Lucy was so attached to history as it is. But ok, let’s run with it. 

And... Rufus! In a hushed conversation with Connor Mason. I never quite understood why, if he was just a coder and doesn’t like to leave his desk, why he was trained to be a pilot-- which obviously involves travelling in time, and the fact that he is such a good pilot (see how Jiya has so much trouble in training) must mean.. he has traveled through time before? Although since Jiya asks him how it was at the end of the episode, maybe it was his first time? Very remiss of Connor Mason to only have 2 living pilots, having lost at least 2 (the guy who went back to his own time, and Emma) and not be already training another one (though obviously he gets on it later in the season). 

Yay, they get into the time machine and that’s when they get introduced, underscoring what a hurried job this is..  Given Lucy’s history with the car, the fact that she can get into the time machine is amazing... she may be scared, but she is doing things that she’s scared of. That kind of thing I can admire. And contrast that with chill Wyatt. And, off they go. 

I wonder if they can control where they land! What if they landed on some poor cow? Or person? How do they always land in a nice isolated spot where no one can find their machine? Did Connor Mason invent a cloaking device as well?

It disturbs me that Lucy is the first one out of the lifeboat! Surely the soldier should be the first one to scope out the land? Maybe it’s meant to underscore 1) Lucy’s eagerness to experience history 2) Wyatt’s motion sickness. And now they have to come to grips with the fact that they are in the past... and they take a bus. All right, I don’t know about US currency, but given they had so much trouble finding historically inaccurate clothing, wouldn’t they have had trouble finding some historically accurate currency? But they took the bus and bought a paper, so that musn’t be an issue. 

Oh no, no one really seems to care about Rufus’s experience in the back of the bus. And he is left outside the tavern too. Ok, time travel tropes like using the wrong lingo, wearing the wrong clothes (pyjamas!) coming into play. We see Wyatt getting distracted, either he is an unrepentant flirt or he has a sad backstory which compels him to put his mission at risk.

Now Lucy tells the guys that Kate only has a short time left to live, and her stoicism makes Wyatt livid, but this tells us that yes, Lucy really doesn’t want to change history and her mission is to make sure history stays the same. At the landing site is Lucy’s turn to shine! She knows the commander’s name and comes up with a plausible excuse for hunting someone. Wyatt smirks, he is impressed! They go searching and Wyatt tried to rescue Kate, which leads to them losing track of Lucy. I would have preferred maybe one episode showing Wyatt’s soldierly competence first before he gets blown off course.    

Gasp, history has been changed! And Lucy is in trouble but they find her in time to save her... Wyatt kills someone and both Lucy and Rufus are horrified! But Lucy is more horrified that the timeline has been changed (on hindsight, for good reason too, because that made Amy disappear). But Wyatt is happy that 37 people (including Kate) have lived. Rufus gets to use his techy skills while Wyatt and Lucy can argue over bringing a modern gun (which we see Lucy changes her mind about in S1E14) and whether things can be messy. I appreciate the show taking time to talk about such things...

They find that the walkie is a detonator...but why would Flynn need a detonator when the bomb could be timed? Or did he only install the timer when his detonator got taken away by the Time Team? 

The Team is in prison... chance to expound on Wyatt’s sad backstory and his guilt, and his motivation for being open to change history... if this is real, maybe he has a chance to get Jessica back. 

“What the hell kind of a gun is this” and Lucy gives Wyatt her best “I told you so” look. Wyatt stares back, then the lightbulb goes on! He’s finally showing some of his skills, but his plan requires teamwork from the Time Team! Rufus with a distraction, Lucy with the raw material, and Wyatt with the lock-picking and success! A “Well done Rufus” and “It was amazing” later, they are running out to save the outgoing Hindenburg. 

Stroke of luck meeting Kate and finding the bomb really quickly, although not before the airship leaves the ground really calmly. I was in a hot air balloon recently and was impressed by how gentle the whole experience was. Wyatt faces the bomb and Lucy can now see the need to make thing up as they go along because, well, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen now. Although Lucy still looks petrified even when she is pointing a knife at the pilots. 

Back to Wyatt and Kate and some relaxing talk before Flynn’s baddie comes by swinging a chopper. With some teamwork they put him down and Wyatt defuses the bomb. But the Hindenburg still catches fire due to the baddie’s bullet. Thankfully it’s pretty near the ground, so the Time Team has saved the day, although it’s still panic as people run away. 

Flynn confronts Lucy and we finally get a chance to learn more about our complex villain. He shows her her notebook. I thought this line was interesting, “I know who you’re meant to be, Lucy, and it isn’t a teacher.” Did he know she would not be put up for tenure? Wyatt does the sensible thing and leaves Kate to “have a good life” and comes to do his job ie protect Lucy. 

I did think that Flynn’s certainty that he wouldn’t shoot was something he learned from the book (not because he was just trying to mess with Wyatt’s mind). When Wyatt does shoot, it does give Flynn food for thought about how reliable the book is for everything (although it’s probably generally true). Wyatt’s aim proves to be great (Lucy is still alive!), but I feel like given this level of skill we are now supposed to think he has, he should have been able to get to Flynn sometime within the next couple of episodes. But if he did, we wouldn’t have a chance to have the redemptive villain arc, so...

Kate dies, everyone is very sad, especially Wyatt, who tried so hard to save her and yet couldn’t...Foreshadowing much?

They arrive back in the present safely, Lucy has messy hair but her white blouse is still oh so white (this is a Tide ad, isn’t it?) and they run through the “spot the difference” with Mason and Agent Christopher. I shouldn’t think too much about the fact that if they change history, when they come back, they’re the only ones who know it has been changed... so no one else would be sad as it’s the only history they have known anyway...

Lucy is still agitated over how history has been changed, though. Then she mentions she spoke to him (so why are they so angry when they learn she has spoken to him again later?). Lucy tries to confront Agent Christopher about “Rittenhouse” and why she was selected but Agent Christopher claims ignorance. Which begs the question, why was Wyatt selected? Out of all the Delta Force operators, why him? Is this another Rittenhouse machination? 

Lucy’s smarts come to the fore again when she reasons what Flynn’s motivations are.. sounds very doomsday... from the US point of view. 

Oh dear, Rufus is a spy of some sort! When will his secret be revealed?

Now Lucy and Wyatt get some alone time and Lucy tries to hypothesize that maybe some things are meant to be, which Wyatt scoffs at. Oh, sweet moment between Jiya and Rufus. Before we go back to sad Wyatt, sad Flynn, and tired Lucy. 

I’m jealous at the size of Lucy’s house! there is a pillar in the middle of the kitchen. Oh look, Lucy’s mum is Moira Queen! This already gives her a sinister vibe. Susanna Thompson must be on a run of twistedly loving mothers. Amy’s gone, wiped out from the photos... and now Lucy must head straight back!

When do they ever sleep? But I need to! Not sure I’ll get to finish Season 1 before Season 2 starts, but at least I’ve stared.     

Sections I hope to have in each episode:

When Wyatt Smoulders :) :   “You can stop calling me ma’am”. Slow eye opening and smirk. “Help us. Please” Puppy eyes. Why was Flynn there: we don’t have any idea, other than Lucy’s guess that he was trying to destroy America. Why did he choose that as his first stop? And...  How did he get Lucy’s diary from the future even before any time travel machine stealing?

Historical Nuggets: 

1. Kate Drummond did not exist :(  

2. There has been no definitive conclusion on why the airship caught fire. Flynn must know something no one else does, then, if he managed to keep it from catching fire! Although Lucy seems as certain as he does. 

Historical book I read: What Was the Hindenburg

(Please also look up the book at your local bookstore or library.)

Random Musings:

I feel like it would be more entertaining if every time they came back something else weird happened, like Chocodiles were names Chocogators or something, which would be unrelated to the mission (like a new James Bond movie).  Frivolous things. It seems like after the first episode showing a butterfly effect (small change to Hindenburg makes Amy disappear and makes Lucy engaged), they actually come back to really similar futures even though in future episodes they do change history quite a bit.

Hm, they haven’t really talked much about Wyatt’s drinking throughout the season... I wonder if they meant to make it an issue. 

And, what if, they accidentally did something that caused Connor Mason not to be born? How would that work? But I shouldn’t spend too much on time travel paradoxes. Part of the fun of this show is that it doesn’t dwell too much on this and even shows that they’re avoiding it eg really bad things happen if you go back to a time where you already exist! So we can focus on cool history stuff and character development! 

It’s still entertaining!

Kudos:

And I must mention the glorious tumblr jbuffyangel.tumblr.com which is my model for a great tumblr. For quite a lot of episodes (especially in the bad seasons), her episode reviews are much more enjoyable than watching the episodes themselves (not that I want that to happen here). If I hadn’t come across her blog, I definitely would not be writing this.   

[computerwarrior]

/* Trimming it down. */

@ask-alan-one

Alan watched with some amusement as Ark, in a very literal sense, lit up at the positive feedback. It seemed like she’d needed it; none of this was easy, after all, and Tron struck him as someone who was pretty reserved in his leadership style.

Well, Alan was too… at first, anyway. He thought of the OS project then, and one coder in particular; still in college at the time, her first programming job. Teaching, in a sense, had changed that – but it hadn’t been immediate. And if programs rezzed in with knowledge of their functions, then maybe Tron had never been presented with that opportunity.

But something about what Tron said pulled Alan back into the present moment.

“So it’s just the two of you?” he asked softly. “When Ark told me about the others – the resistance movement – I guess I assumed that some of them had been System Monitors.”

-

Because of the particular ups and downs that had happened in Ark's life, she had been alone for many cycles. After everything that had happened, it had been hard to know who to trust, so she hadn't searched for anyone else to join the next iteration of the resistance. So, as such, praise has been very scarce for her. Which meant that the kind words that were said meant so much to her.

Tron nodded, "We're the last two System Monitors left. I don't know what happened, but Clu and the Occupation turned some of them to their side. Others...they forced them to join. Between the two, he was able to take control of all of them quickly. Perhaps after the virus showed up and Flynn and me were believed dead, they looked for someone else to lead them through the danger. Now that the Occupation has been stopped, it's possible that some of them are still among the defeated troops, but, they likely can't be trusted."

"Do you need a patch for your injury? I always keep extras on me, just in case."

I think I'm alright now -- but thank you. That's very kind of you.

[not-that-dillinger]

Flynn was back. Ed got the message from Hal, in the middle of work.

Flynn was back, and he broke into Ed's house, and got onto the Grid.

Ed left in the middle of the meeting, color drained from his face. Mackey had been pissed, but Alan looked concerned. Ed drove home, heart pounding in fear for what that creep might do to Ed's family.

He found Hal hiding at his home on the grid where he Rezzed in, shaken by whatever had happened. Tesler, his army, and Tron had gone ahead searching for the missing admin and Sonic, with directions not to engage unless absolutely necessary. If Clu's abuser managed to kidnap him, then he must have somehow gotten his user powers back, which made him especially dangerous. Even without, there was still a chance he could use user overrides command programs to do whatever he wanted.

Ed grabbed a mini disc from a hidden drawer in the desk, and attached it to his disc. He had created it for in case something just like this happened; It contained the same code he had initially used to take the user's powers away, except turned almost viral. The script would transfer to anyone he touched--program or user. It would do nothing if transferred to a program, and Ed still had the original scrip on his disc deactivated, so the disc wouldn't install a copy on his disc. Sonic's disc had the anti-virus script on it.

Clarke waited behind with Hal to escort Ed. In theory, Ed could fly; Clu had gifted him a cloak that allowed him to fly, but Ed was still terrible at it, it was much too slow to travel the outlands by, and honestly it was more a party trick than anything else (if a dramatic, comfy warm one, at that). Regardless, Clarke was an excellent flier, and they were quickly in the air over the city, zooming toward the outlands where Flynn had taken Ed's sons.

To nobody's surprise, Tron managed to track Flynn back to his old hideout.

Ed didn't bother trying to sneak in. The first time he encountered Clu's abuser, Ed had been a competent coder, but still learning how things worked on the Grid. Now he knew the Grid inside and out, almost as well as Clu did. This did not, by any means, make Ed dangerous; only a highly competent user.

He could hear Clu pleading to that monster, and Sonic crying in pain.

Ed hovered about a foot in the air, and sent a blast of energy toward the doors (because that monster nearly gave Ed a heart attack when Ed heard he had his sons, so Ed was going to scare the ever-living shit out of him for that... and because Ed knew half of this was a mind game, so he needed to appear as intimidating as possible).

The doors slammed open with a boom that echoed through the rest of the base.

Ed wasn't violent by nature. He hated violence, had experienced cruelty as a child at his father's hand, and vowed never to become that. But the sight before him, Clu tied to the table, face wet with tears, clearly scared and hurt, and Sonic locked in a tiny cage, crying in pain while Flynn did something that activated the too-tight shock collar around the hoglet's little neck.

Flynn had threatened and hurt two of the beings Ed loved most.

And that made Ed extremely dangerous.

"You should not have come back, Flynn." Ed used energy fields to amplify his voice and make it seem like it was coming from all around them as he seemingly glided toward the other user. He gathered some of the Grid's latent energy in his hand, and it crackled like lightning on his skin.

"We gave you a second chance. You could have left us alone, tried to reconnect with your son, but you chose to come back and hurt mine."

Ed got towered over Flynn, merely inches from his face. "And for that, you will pay," he said quietly.

He punched Flynn in the gut with a fistful of energy, and Flynn was thrown back. His light lines flashed a lime green, indicating that Ed's 'virus' had been transferred to Flynn. The older user crashed into the wall, and crumpled to the ground. A little remote clattered to the floor, and Ed kicked it out of Flynn's reach.

Distantly, he noted that Sonic had stopped crying, but Ed was not done with Flynn.

Ed kicked and punched as Flynn scrabbled to get away.

He kept punching.

"Please... stop," Flynn begged.

Ed grabbed Flynn by the throat and hauled him to his feet, slamming him into the wall. "Give me one good reason why I should show you mercy," he growled, "when Clu begged you countless times to stop, and you never did, or when you hurt a child?"

Flynn opened his mouth to respond, but Ed did not want to hear the older user say that Clu and Sonic were not human. He squeezed Flynn's throat, cutting off his airway, and any reply.

"I do not want to hear your excuses," he hissed. "You do not deserve any mercy, and the only reason I am restraining myself from beating you to a bloody pulp is because unlike you, I am not a monster, and I refuse to expose a child to that sort of violence. And yes. Sonic is a child."

Ed dropped Flynn with a look of disgust like he had just touched a steaming pile of shit, and the user crumpled to the floor like a wet rag. Ed formed an energy field on top of him, pinning the user to the ground.

Ed straightened up, and took a deep breath. A moment thinking of poor Sonic, terrified in his cage, and Ed's anger was doused.

He turned first to Clu, because it would be easier to free him, and Ed was probably going to need Clu's help getting the shock collar off Sonic without hurting the little hedgehog.

"Are you both alright?" he asked softly, while he carefully undid Clu's restraints.

[IDK who's saying these, but the angst looked spicy.... Maybe Flynn or Robotnic captured Ed, Clu, and/or Sonic? Don't have to use all; I just couldn't decide which... ]

“Quit struggling, you will only make it worse.”

“Aw, is it too tight? Good.”

“I’ve been looking for something new to experiment on…” 

//letting Ed stay free because somebody's gotta go fucking feral on Flynn's ass help Sonic and Clu or get help for them.//

"Quit struggling, you'll only make it worse for yourself." Flynn sneered as he tightened the restraints binding Clu to a table by his wrists, ankles, neck, and disc. He then turned to his other captive, the terrified,, shaking little hedgehog who lay with his hands and feet tied.

"Oh Grid, let him go! Please, let him go!" Tears sprang to Clu's eyes.

"Not a chance," the User said, picking up a hinged metal ring, the inside of which appeared to be lined with thick wires, "“I’ve been looking for something new to experiment on…” He leaned over the little alien and and snapped the ring closed around his neck. Sonic screamed when it gave him an initial shock. Satisfied, Flynn roughly picked him up and threw him into a cage that was barely big enough for him to move at all, releasing Sonic's hands and feet as he did. The little one immediately started tugging at the ring around his neck. Flynn seemed amused as he watched.

“Aw, is it too tight? Good.” He said, "That means it'll hurt more if you make me use it. Or if you try to use your powers" Sonic curled into a shaking little ball, crying in pain as he did.