Funny, because this is actually all stuff I've thought about.

J Wrote:A lot of the Tron media has been centered on how similar the Programs are to (Western) humans. They have jobs, friends, personalities. They have crushes and love affairs, crack jokes, are scared to die. They have a religion based around worship of their human creators, with a priesthood and rituals based on that communion.

Don't forget to look at religious differences as well. Many societal "rules" are based on the dominant religion of that society, at least in a historical context... how might a program's version of religion mean that accepted norms are different from those we know from a [choose your dominant religion of choice] standpoint?

J Wrote:But what I'm asking the gallery is where they might be different. The biggest one was something 2.0 brought up that probably carries over to the films and Uprising. They don't have families and kinship ties as we know them. No mothers, fathers, siblings...The closest Ma3a was able to understand the term "father" was "earlier version."

Yes, exactly. Perhaps relationships are not as "toxic" without an automatic tie to feel guilt over...

J Wrote:They likely can't reproduce, so what would that mean for gender designation or roles?

Not only do they not reproduce, but they don't eat (so no cooking), no laundry to do, etc. There would, in my opinion, be no gender roles. Nor would there be any reason for females to be seen as weaker, since a program's function will have nothing to do with how it looks. Whether you can do your job well is based on your coding, not your physicality. It would be interesting to see how programs respond to the concept of sexism in our world.

In addition, if appearance is arbitrary, there would be no need for racism and the like, either. Now, they may discriminate based on other criteria, but without programs of a certain color having a certain origin, that factor may not come into play.

J Wrote:This could be a product of the time it was made in, but I noticed that the Programs seem to be very free about touching one another, at least in the first movie. Clasped hands, hands on shoulders and backs, carrying each other, lots of hugs. It would come as a big shock to the guys starting with Legacy and Uprising what a big teddy bear Tron could be outside of a battle. (Kingdom Hearts 2 exaggerates it, but not by much) This might tie back into the gender roles bit above being either purely aesthetic or representing something different on their side. In our culture, males get discouraged from showing physical affection to each other because they fear getting mistaken for gay or at least something "less than" male.

And, of course, without gender roles or reproduction or Judeo-Christian-type morality, there likely isn't much objection to bent gender and sexuality either. In fact, even in T:L, I saw a couple background characters who seemed quite gender-ambiguous.

J Wrote:I also figure that there is not the "who am I and why am I here" questioning that drives a lot of human thought and philosophy. They are created with a directive stating their purpose, and while they have a massive degree of freedom in carrying out that directive, they can't disobey or break that directive.

I always imagined a program in "the real world" would feel very lost, suddenly with no sense of what they should be. They probably feel users and Isos are very pathetic and sad indeed.

J Wrote:And the fifty ton Reco in the room for anyone writing fanfic - how similar or different are their bodies/shells to human form?

Frankly? I'd argue for quite similar indeed. But it's hard to say, especially with discrepancies between the two films. For example:

T82: The programs don't seem to be *wearing clothes* so much as the Grid suits seem to be a part of them. They may wear something over top-- Flynn and the other conscripts, Yori in the deleted love scene-- but the basic pattern never changes.

T:L: The Sirens undress and redress Sam with little fanfare, so obviously they're used to it, and his strange, non-glowing clothing doesn't elicit much shock. Nor does the sight of his body. One tells another "he's different," but I always got the impression it was just a feeling she had; none of them seem to react to his actual appearance as I would think they might if it were different than they were used to seeing.

Or:
T82: In the scene where Dumont is having his power stripped, we get almost an x-ray view (much like the electrification scene of Young Frankenstein). And he has a skeleton in there.

T:L: Quorra's arm is off, and the edges just seem to be pixelated. There doesn't seem to be really any bones or flesh. Perhaps Disney simply didn't want anything gory, I don't know.

Then there is, of course, the fact that the costumes (esp. in T82) leave very little to the imagination and it's certainly obvious the characters have breasts, crotch bulges, etc. But whether the directors actually meant this to be indicative of their bodies, or whether it was simply a feature of the actors' bodies that they couldn't eliminate, who knows?


Do programs have some form of currency? Do they even need it? I mean, if another program does something for you-- do they expect compensation, or is it just a feature of them performing their function? What about places where this is more ambiguous, such as the EOL Club-- do you pay for your drinks there? (It almost seems so, considering the reaction to Zustor's "libations for everybody!!!" line, but what would they use for currency? Surely a straight barter system works no better in there than it does out here.)


Also don't forget that they would have little concept of nature (trees, stars, animals), or even of illness/death the way humans would. There, you die, and you simply disappear. I always said that if Clu did get to the real world-- with all the crap he pulled, he would still be utterly shocked at all of the gory things that can happen to a human body and all of the heinous things human being do to each other and other creatures. On the Grid there are no headless bodies hanging from bridges, no bloody wounds*, no abuse of children or animals since these do not even exist there.

*I've always wondered what programs think of blood. Many humans can't stand the sight of it, and I've always figured it's because we have that deep knowledge that seeing blood = nothing good. In all of our lives, we've associated the sight of blood with pain, injury, something being very wrong. It's too much for some folks. Programs, on the other hand... if they saw someone bleed, would they be extra-freaked-out because it's something new and weird and unfamiliar, or would they be entirely calm because they don't have an instinctive "this means something bad" feeling about it?


I know I've thought of more, but I'm tired and not thinking clearly tonight, so I can't remember everything.

They don't have families and kinship ties as we know them. No mothers, fathers, siblings...The closest Ma3a was able to understand the term "father" was "earlier version."

Agreed. I doubt they really have a concept of family. They are free to choose who they are connected to without the "pre-made" or born-in connections humans have. Since we often say friends come and go, but blood is forever (for good or bad), it makes me wonder if Programs, as a whole, are more likely to to tend towards permanence or transience in friendships.

I also figure that there is not the "who am I and why am I here" questioning that drives a lot of human thought and philosophy. They are created with a directive stating their purpose, and while they have a massive degree of freedom in carrying out that directive, they can't disobey or break that directive.

I strongly agree with this. Indeed, you sometimes see the idea that people, human beings, need a purpose and that they need meaning - I've more than once seen people "say" (type - it was online) that if their is no God, then life has no meaning, no purpose and that's depressing. Others say you can choose to give your life meaning, create your own purpose. Still others would say not everyone needs a purpose. But people (or philosophers, at least) do seem to strive for that. It's something programs already know, as you said. They don't understand the Users or why they do the things they do or abandon the projects they abandon, etc. But they know what they are for. Interestingly, we never see Quorra grapple with not having a purpose, but since she spent most of her life with a human, maybe that's not that surprising. It certainly doesn't bother me that I don't have a purpose. The nature of programs, of course, leads into the freewill v. defined by programming question. Which makes me think of people today speculating on the degree of free will humans have, and how much is in DNA or neural pathways or brain chemistry, etc. Frankly, that's a discussion (the human one) that is both over my head and of no interest to me.

This could be a product of the time it was made in, but I noticed that the Programs seem to be very free about touching one another, at least in the first movie. ... In our culture, males get discouraged from showing physical affection to each other because they fear getting mistaken for gay or at least something "less than" male.

I didn't notice the touching, so it must have come off as natural to me. I have noticed how nowadays television characters (except perhaps parent and child to a degree) may not touch each other without half the online fans saying there's something sexual there. And that very much does include touching between siblings. There can be no meaningful relationship without sex - it gets more than a little tedious.

Not only do they not reproduce, but they don't eat (so no cooking), no laundry to do, etc. There would, in my opinion, be no gender roles. Nor would there be any reason for females to be seen as weaker, since a program's function will have nothing to do with how it looks. Whether you can do your job well is based on your coding, not your physicality. It would be interesting to see how programs respond to the concept of sexism in our world.

I agree with this, too. Would be interesting if there were simply many more male than female programs years ago because there were more men than women in the career field. At least, I think there were.

T82: The programs don't seem to be *wearing clothes* so much as the Grid suits seem to be a part of them. They may wear something over top-- Flynn and the other conscripts, Yori in the deleted love scene-- but the basic pattern never changes. T:L: The Sirens undress and redress Sam with little fanfare, so obviously they're used to it, and his strange, non-glowing clothing doesn't elicit much shock. Nor does the sight of his body. One tells another "he's different," but I always got the impression it was just a feeling she had; none of them seem to react to his actual appearance as I would think they might if it were different than they were used to seeing.

Oh, did her pattern stay the same in the deleted scene - I never really noticed. I did note Dumont at work v. not at work.

Certainly, in T:L they wear clothing. We see Clu in various outfits, Gem has the raincoat, and Quorra's glove gets pulled up. And it is kind of different than T82 in that regard. Yori's helmet changed, but that's not really acknowledged. With the one exception, their circuits showed on their "clothes" not their skins. And T:L followed that, correct?

Do programs have some form of currency? Do they even need it?

I'd say no - power and CPU time are allotted by the MCP (bad guy) or the Users or whatever program balances these things so that performance is best for the User.

[QUOTE]I've always wondered what programs think of blood. [/QUOTE]I'm not sure about blood, but I would think a corpse would freak them right out. I mean, for them a dead person is literally gone. But here is the person, right in front of them, but some how NOT there, not alive. They might not even have a concept of a soul or or afterlife - you are either present or not, and corpse screws with that, in a way. And then there's the decaying part....then again, maybe they'd just consider it an oddity and it wouldn't mess with their heads.

To my mind, the most valuable commodity to a program would be system resources: CPU time, disk space, RAM, etc. Of course, these concepts are all very abstract when talking about the Grid. We never see programs queuing up to get their allocated CPU time.

The only thing I can think of that really touched on this is when the MCP took power from Sark or slowed down his power cycles or something of that nature - can't recall exact phrase.

I would have to look really close, but I tentatively think so. She is definitely still wearing a suit with circuitry patterns underneath the sparkly-robe-thing; the only question is whether the patterns are the same.

I thought I'd checked, and the patterns were different, but I wouldn't swear to it. And that scene isn't really canon, since it was deleted...

I always sort of got the impression that the suits in T82 sort of WERE like their skin-- or their outer surface, or whatever you might want to call it. I don't believe they were meant to be removable, or seen as a separate part of the program like we think of clothing as being. I could be wrong, but that was the idea it gave me. In T:L, it's a definite difference; programs can even have their circuitry patterns changed (as the Games conscripts and Clu's repurposed recruits proved).

I agree on skin in T82 (with the deleted scene as the strongest indicator) and clothes in T:L, but we still have to deal with the discrepancy..well, we don't have to, but they are there. Maybe Flynn just wanted it that way and so programmed it as such? However that still raises the question of why the ISOs were born clothed.

Then there's the proposal that Program's clothing isn't clothing, but isn't quite so unchanging as human skin, but is instead like shell or skin you'd use for programs to change the color-scheme and whatnot...but I'm not sure how Sam's clothing change fits into that.

I think the programs in the first Tron and Tron Legacy had less emotion than the ISOs. Well because in Tron Legacy the programs had like a robotic voice... and Flynn and Quarra had a normal voice. Oh but Gem and Castor has very human like voices but they were in white clothes. Not sure but the ones dress in black usually sounded more robotic.

Either way... the ISOs seemed to have more of a soul...
and they had the secret in their digital DNA.

Family? Well, that has been on my mind a LOT for this scenario. The issue would never have come up in Legacy. There is some symbolic bits in there about how Flynn apologizes to “prodigal son” Clu, but Clu rejects the apology and severs any notion of family ties. There's no way in hell that Clu and Sam would call each other “brothers” (and the concept would probably piss Sam off if you suggested it).

But flip the coin in a 2.0/Legacy patchwork scenario? Well, things just got interesting. Figure Jet takes the opposite tack and always kinda imagines a heroic big brother and awesome big sister just on the other side of that screen. Silly fantasy as a kid, but as an adult? Actually gets to meet them? Finds out what happened to his “brother?” And explaining the concept of “brother” to Tronzler and Yori is going to be like explaining the idea of “nine” as a verb.

Yeah. Jet's gonna need the Costco-sized bottle of aspirin.

I also said to my sister post-Legacy that if Alan had it in him to know what he did when he made Tron, it would break his brain.

If he had it in him to understand everything that his creation has had to endure, it would break him.

emdeesee said:A thing worth thinking about, though: programs in T:L are not in their "natural environment". Flynn's system is much more like a green house or a zoo; a carefully tailored, artificial environment, existing only to exist, unlike the Encom system, which was "organic", and serviced the requests of likely thousands of users, instead of just one.

Another reason I strip-mine 2.0 for all it's worth. It made an attempt to show what different “real-world,” and “modern” systems would look like; Encom lab servers, a desktop PC, a router, an antiquated server, a couple Internet hubs, a virus-ridden corrupted server, a crappy PDA, a rival company's network, and a virtual server.

Kat Said:In addition, if appearance is arbitrary, there would be no need for racism and the like, either. Now, they may discriminate based on other criteria, but without programs of a certain color having a certain origin, that factor may not come into play.

We've seen some racism in Uprising and Legacy in the form of the Iso purge and discrimination in the original against User-Believers. They have a lot of the same crap we do in that regard. It's probably more on belief, political opinion, or perceived usefulness.

And, of course, without gender roles or reproduction or Judeo-Christian-type morality, there likely isn't much objection to bent gender and sexuality either. In fact, even in T:L, I saw a couple background characters who seemed quite gender-ambiguous.

There's also Castor, which is...Castor. And yeah...gender ID is a little blurry with the background characters, I've noticed.

Kat Said:I always imagined a program in "the real world" would feel very lost, suddenly with no sense of what they should be. They probably feel users and Isos are very pathetic and sad indeed.

I've wanted to play this up in some of my fics, with the Programs feeling horrified about how adrift Users seem to be. With Isos, it often translates into the vitrol talk radio blowhards have for anyone a couple shades darker than them; the perception that they're just there to suck up resources and not work for a living, despite them maybe finding a garbage job and working 2 or 3 times harder at something a Program won't stoop to doing because it's not in their function range. Users get a pass because...well, Creators and Gods.

Kat Said:I've always wondered what programs think of blood.

Seeing as it's something unique to humans...Users....they might see it as a sign of divinity as something to be VERY scared of. Gods being injured is definitely an “Oh shit.”

Kat Said:Do programs have some form of currency? Do they even need it? I mean, if another program does something for you-- do they expect compensation, or is it just a feature of them performing their function? What about places where this is more ambiguous, such as the EOL Club-- do you pay for your drinks there? (It almost seems so, considering the reaction to Zustor's "libations for everybody!!!" line, but what would they use for currency? Surely a straight barter system works no better in there than it does out here.)

Again, it might be a hierarchy based on usefulness or function. Programs who are useful are more respected and well-known. Programs who are lazy and useless are also well-known and dismissed. Those who are obsolete are...well fate worse than de-rez. As much as it would terrify us Yanks, it may actually be a functioning, true communism. Each worker provides for the system, each has access to its resources. Status is determined by how well you carry out function.


As for circuitry? I figured it was an identifier. Each Program got a unique set that acted as an identifier, since they mostly dressed alike and there may be a limited set for faces and hair colors. So, a society like that, you'd get good with body language, and identifying circuitry (which is probably why Beck could get away with half the shit he did even when he made little other efforts to conceal his ID other than circuitry). It's on one's skin, and translates no matter what clothing one puts over it. Isos have a lot more circuitry and a lot more elaborate skin circuitry than Programs, but Users don't have any. (That's what I figured the “he's different” line came from). By masking it with a standard Games costume? Well, that's the equivalent of tattooing your arm with a barcode – reduction of your identity to just another interchangeable piece to be worked until dead.

J Wrote: Family? Well, that has been on my mind a LOT for this scenario. The issue would never have come up in Legacy. There is some symbolic bits in there about how Flynn apologizes to “prodigal son” Clu, but Clu rejects the apology and severs any notion of family ties. There's no way in hell that Clu and Sam would call each other “brothers” (and the concept would probably piss Sam off if you suggested it).

I guess I never thought of that, because I've never been a passenger on the "Clu = son to Flynn" train... I always saw them more as equals/friends than any sort of filial relationship. However, there's that line where Clu says to Flynn (of Sam), "You did all this for him? Why?" And Flynn replies simply, "He's my son." I always thought that was probably not much of an explanation for Clu, since he just wouldn't recognize the idea of blood ties, and the fact that you automatically belong to someone simply because you're related (I think I have part of a post-T:L story where Quorra is contemplating the fact that even though she's spent a thousand cycles with Flynn and the two must be just about as close as two people who haven't killed each other in that time can be, Flynn automatically takes a lot of risks for the safety of someone he essentially doesn't know, who he hasn't seen in that long, who he last saw when the dude was a little kid... simply on virtue of the fact that this person is his own flesh-and-blood. He has no idea whether Sam grew up a serial killer or puppy kicker or drug dealer... it doesn't matter, because Sam is his son, end of story, and so without question Flynn affords a virtual stranger the same treatment he would someone who's spent a thousand years getting close to him. Wonder how she feels about that...).

J Wrote:We've seen some racism in Uprising and Legacy in the form of the Iso purge and discrimination in the original against User-Believers. They have a lot of the same crap we do in that regard. It's probably more on belief, political opinion, or perceived usefulness.

I would define that more as xenophobia, a form of classism, religious bias, etc. than as racism per se...

J Wrote:I've wanted to play this up in some of my fics, with the Programs feeling horrified about how adrift Users seem to be.

I played around with the idea of Tron coming to the real world, but of course one of the reasons I realized that was uber-improbable is that he would feel... so lost. Probably heart-rendingly lost, with no idea what he's supposed to do with himself out there. Closest he might end up with is LAPD or Border Patrol, but even that would be light-years away from what he's used to.

J Wrote:As for circuitry? I figured it was an identifier. Each Program got a unique set that acted as an identifier, since they mostly dressed alike and there may be a limited set for faces and hair colors. So, a society like that, you'd get good with body language, and identifying circuitry (which is probably why Beck could get away with half the shit he did even when he made little other efforts to conceal his ID other than circuitry). It's on one's skin, and translates no matter what clothing one puts over it. Isos have a lot more circuitry and a lot more elaborate skin circuitry than Programs, but Users don't have any. (That's what I figured the “he's different” line came from). By masking it with a standard Games costume? Well, that's the equivalent of tattooing your arm with a barcode – reduction of your identity to just another interchangeable piece to be worked until dead.

I had possibly equated the Grid games suits to be equivalent with a type of recoding. Especially when you hold it up against the scene where all of the programs look normal walking into the Rectifier, and then come out looking all the same, which I assumed signified a large change to their function.

I've not yet settled on whether I think a program has circuitry imprinted on their skin, however. But I still think the Armory scene is indicative of the fact that they do not, because again, the Sirens don't seem startled that Sam lacks this feature. I always imagined that most programs are pretty clueless about users-- Clu would want it that way-- so the Sirens may not even know that "no circuitry = user" (though if they did, it would still be no less mind-blowing), but certainly it would mean something they'd never encountered before, something that's not just slightly different like you'd look at someone who'd dyed their hair royal blue, but something never seen before, possibly never heard of before. It would be like someone showing up to you and stripping down and exhibiting stigmata or some other kind of really unusual body marking-- well, say they had circuitry and you knew they weren't tattoos. You wouldn't give them just a casual, barely-interested "well, that's different" and forget about it. It would be a "holy shit, WTF?" type of thing.

Tzigone Wrote:I don't think it bothers her. She probably has more a concept of what family means than most programs. She's read books, and has spent that millennium with Flynn, and has undoubtedly been told much about family by Flynn. I'm not saying she understands it completely, but I see absolutely no indication that she is in any way upset or jealous or feeling displaced by Flynn (of course, I also don't see her as a perceiving Flynn as a father-figure - a mentor, yes; a father, no). She thought Sam was safe being sent to Zuse, and didn't understand Flynn risking himself that way (because she thought Sam was safe), but she accepted it. I think, for Quorra, the simple fact that Flynn says it's right to do this, risk this, means that it is. Sam being important to Flynn makes him important to her, because Flynn matters to her. She will fulfill his wishes, backs his play, no matter what (including switching disks, going with Sam, in the end). Her loyalty/trust comes from long years of Flynn having earned it, but also just from him being a User. Judging by her words/deeds, she still has a degree of User-worship - using "The Creator" and not really arguing or thinking Flynn is wrong like Same does (at least until someone else arrives to argue with him first), and saying Clu doesn't belong in the User-world, etc. She'll need to get over that.

I still could see where deep-down, she might question it, though. I know I would. She'll find out in time, of course, that Sam's an okay guy, but that might not really matter anyway. I don't imagine programs (inc. Isos) don't have a sense of hierarchy. I could also see them butting heads over the fact that, well, she did spend all that time with Flynn, whereas Sam hasn't seen him since he was just a little kid. To her, there may be a bit of "what are you talking about? You didn't even know the guy." For him, I would imagine that every time she says something like "Your dad would say..." or "Your dad might do..." or "I remember your dad saying/doing..." that Sam might feel quite jealous. They do argue over this in my partial-story, in fact-- she thinks she's being helpful in giving Sam an idea of what his dad was like, but to Sam it feels smug and like he's getting a lecture, and finally he just bursts out with "Don't tell me what he would do! He was MY dad!"

I daresay she might find Sam important also because she's probably spent a thousand cycles hearing all about him (in a biased voice, no less). Poor Sam may well be on a pedestal... be a lot of pressure for him to live up to whatever Flynn may have told her, about what he was like 20 years ago, gilded by time and love and whatever.

(Of course, then we could question Flynn's motives-- love, or a sense of guilt/nostalgia? Surely some mix of both. But that's a totally different discussion.)

Tzigone Wrote:I will note that Tron doesn't seem to share these traits - we see him disagree with Flynn, he accepts Flynn's words that Users muddle through just like programs, etc. He fights for the users - it's his function - but he seems to accept the idea easily enough that Flynn is no more omniscient or always right or any of that than any program. He seems to get that Flynn is simply more powerful, but still fallible, and to not expect perfection. At least, based on the little we have from Tron in Legacy and on how he behaved after learning Flynn was a User in the original Tron. I don't now if that's just because of Alan's nature, or because he was from a system not created by Flynn or what.

In part I think it may have been that Tron got to know Flynn before he knew what he was. By the time he learned Flynn was a user, some of the awe may have been gone. It'd be like striking up a conversation with a stranger, and then after a couple hours finding out they were someone famous you didn't recognize, or something. You might not be nearly as impressed as if they'd originally walked up to you and said, "Hi, I'm [insert famous person here]."

Tzigone Wrote:I go with what's on-screen, and that's not on-screen. Because I might feel that way doesn't mean characters do - to me that's projecting my feelings onto characters that haven't expressed them (or have expressed opposing sentiments), making them out-of-character. To me, we got not one iota of indication she felt that way, and indeed all her actions and words indicate she didn't. But people perceive character motivations differently - that's what makes discussion interesting, I guess.

I'm more likely to go with basic psychology. Yeah, Disney wants us to think they rode off into the sunset (or, sunrise, in this case) and all was peachy foreverandeveramen. That's... how Disney movies are. The prince rescues the princess and they live happily ever after and they never fight and nobody wakes up with morning breath ever. Real life isn't that way. Human thoughts and feelings and emotions don't work that way. People have a sense of what's unfair, they get jealous, they are easily hurt. Sam's obviously not the most emotionally-mature guy out there, especially where his dad is concerned. I doubt Quorra is, either, especially since she's barely interacted with anyone else for a thousand years and has a naive feel to her (which seems a bit strange, considering everything she's seen in her lifetime, but okay, Disney, roll with it).

What the film shows us, is two people who have only known each other for a few hours. Quorra meets a guy who's the son of her idol, who she's been hearing about for just about forever, who she rescued, who she thinks is there to shake things up and make a change. Sam meets a pretty girl who saved his life and can kick ass and was close to his dad. Together they go through some rough shit and save each other a few more times. (IOW, the movie doesn't show us a whole hell of a lot-- a few hours out of an entire lifetime??) After all that, no wonder they feel like they get along. But what happens when they wake up in the morning? Eventually the adrenaline rush is gone, the initial attraction is gone, the expectations are gone, and real life sets in, and trust me, they're not still going to be gazing starrily into each other's eyes. Even the best of friends don't get along constantly.

I daresay it would be more out-of-character if they DID get on famously. The film *does* show us that Sam’s not exactly the poster child for gregariousness. He’s standoffish, impatient, and probably at least somewhat antisocial. His quick response to his dad’s query as to whether he’s involved with anyone is probably proof that he hasn’t got a whole lot of interest in romantic relationships, and that feeling-- and his lifelong tendencies to be antisocial-- are not going to change overnight.

Quorra might get on better. She’s already used to being holed up with one person, and she’s got a leg up on Sam—she’s used to his dad. And Sam is very like his dad was at his age—cocky, challenging authority, got a dose of that Flynn charm-- just darker because of different life circumstances. Still, she’ll have to learn to separate the two, and to get used to the habits and quirks of someone different.

Tzigone Wrote:I definitely think that's possible. He knew him as just another program at first and so his perception of him formed under that assumption and first impressions count. But it's still interesting that after knowing him 1000+ years (in experienced time), Quorra still has that degree of awe about him. I do think that he actually saved her life may contribute, too. And that by time she knew him, he wasn't learning about the new world the way he was with Tron. I mean, there was probably nothing about this world that she knew that he didn't, unlike with Tron. She never saw him in ignorance. But she did see him lose (leading to his stopping fighting), and her opinion still held. Guess we're back to first impressions (or, indeed, stories she heard before she knew him).

I've never been clear on when they met-- before or after he stopped fighting? That is, does she have any side of that story besides his? (I just always wonder about her strong iteration to Sam that Flynn DID fight Clu and it just made Clu stronger, and the fact that none of us have been able to figure out how that might work... Does Flynn do any.... embellishing? It sure seems like a Flynn-like thing to do...)