#isos

I wanna get some sillies from you in the ISOS AU. Yeah I could do it myself but I wanna hear some ideas.

Maybe some fun cuddle stuff w the giant dork haha

I HAVE IDEAS HEHEHEHEHE

You’re gonna get an idea list :3 cuz I have a lot.

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-If he forgets to say, wash his hair, he will be getting an entire HR complaint from you. It’s not even a negotiation, and somehow this massive man is cowering like a dog from a particularly aggressive ant.

-The fabric of his clothes often ends up as your blanket. When he wears wooloon (get it? Woolen, Wooloo, wooloon :D) sweaters, you can often find lint patches that you can use to take a nap in his breast pocket with.

-His chest hair is like knee height once he’s healthier. Dude is SO fluffy.

-Since this version of AZ knows magic, he’s got a very keen eye for using it in often unconventional ways. Usually, this is because the alternative spell he uses costs him less energy, allowing him to do more throughout a given day.

-Is extremely aware of his surroundings when you first move into his room, like the MOST nervous he’s been in eons. He doesn’t even technically sleep the first few nights because he’s terrified of hitting something too hard and like..causing an earthquake or something. The smallest thing to live in his room before you is Floette! He’s not used to having to be around someone as fragile and tiny as a joltik, so he’s rightfully spooked.

-Loves running his fingernail up and down your spine. You’re just so cute and he can’t help wanting to pet you. He’s very careful about it, like someone would be when petting an insect or a particularly small frog.

-He likes to sing! Very softly of course, as not to blow out any eardrums, but the gentle rumble it creates is incredibly soothing. He often puts the other Floettes in the hotel to sleep on his chest by singing when they’re particularly stressed.

-The worst item for him to try and enlarge is socks.

-Sometimes has to physically restrain himself from aggressively pecking you with kisses. He knows he has to be very careful, so if it’s particularly bad, he’ll suddenly hug a pillow or just grab Floette and peck her head playfully to redirect the cuteness aggression.

-Best place to kiss him is his lips and his nose, as they’re the most sensitive places on his body (safest sensitive places anyway *wiggles eyebrows*)

-Has allergies and uses a spell to prevent himself from sneezing. Has not sneezed since before the fall of the Romamon Empire. (I’m not creative shut up). The first time in eons he sneezes is because of us distracting him whilst he was outside and finally the bastard sneezes and it’s..a bit of a disaster. (I’m not gonna explain because eugh..you do the math.)

-Has a previously unknown Pokemon living on him that’s some kinda skin mite creature. Very cute and helpful, also gives every person (including us) a sense of gross realization.

-AZ has swatches of cloth that he cuts from any new clothing he makes to give you as a blanket. If you dislike the blanket enough, sometimes he restarts the project using a different material. He’s hoping if his clothes are materials you like, you’ll lay on him :>

——-

The ISOs are thinking, conscious lifeforms with DNA-like code, far more complex in their structure than ordinary Programs. They were somehow spontaneously generated by the Grid, and I have previously mentioned that I believe this was caused by Kevin Flynn’s presence, that some of his biological material was somehow absorbed by the Grid, giving it a blueprint from which to generate new lifeforms. I have one theory where this happened simply by Flynn hanging out and interacting with the Grid for an extended period of time, and another theory where it was caused specifically when Flynn created Clu, making Clu the original proto-ISO.

Either way, the point is, the Grid itself, consciously or unconsciously, generated the ISOs from Flynn’s biological structure. My new theory is that this was not, in fact, the first time that the Grid had birthed lifeforms, just the first time that it could create something this complex, since it now had a complex enough blueprint to work from.

The Grid, both in the ENCOM systems and in Flynn’s new system, had always had the potential, and perhaps the will, to generate its own lifeforms, but before Flynn’s appearance, it could only create far simpler creatures, possibly based on the codes of the User-made Programs. These creatures were small, simple-minded, perhaps only with animal instincts, but to compensate for this, there were a lot of them. The Grid’s urge to create life made it generate more and more of these tiny, hungry critters. Swarms of them. They weren’t something the Users had intended for, and they caused problems when they came into contact with Programs. They were a kind of strange glitch. Bugs. Bugs from the Grid. Grid Bugs.

In the beginning of Tron: Betrayal, Flynn’s newly created Grid is beset by huge swarms of Grid Bugs devouring everything in their way, causing all kinds of chaos and destruction. Clu believes that they’re somehow connected to the ISOs. And maybe he’s right. Maybe the birth of the ISOs was preceded by an increase in Grid Bugs generation, as the Grid struggled with the strange new information it had received from Flynn’s genetic code, trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out what kind of new, complex creatures it could generate from it. The chaos these swarms caused were, in a sense, the birthing pains of the ISOs.

(these are rambles concocted off of caffeine and hyperfixating on Cody Flynn, and I do appreciate being corrected where I'm wrong or seem to lose the plot too much!)

I think read somewhere (there's a lot of lore and fan theories, I don't remember where they all are anymore) that grid bugs and ISOs were cropping up alongside each other, what if that's how is was SUPPOSED to be, but Kevin got involved and fucked it all up?

What if ISOs just started spawning, didn't know wtf this place was but oh, it's so pretty and cool and- GRID BUGS! now twenty of them are dead... Then they use their discs to kill the grid bugs. New ISOs crop up as the first batches are making little villages in the Outlands, they building a society and- GRID BUG SWARM! now two hundred of them are dead, but they now know that Grid Bugs come in swarms like that from time to time like typhoons.

As time passes, the ISOs and Grid Bugs keep each other in check. That would explain why they are rezzing into the grid at the same time and why ISOs seem to come from an infinite supply from the Sea of Simulation. One is a predator and the other is prey!

But Flynn came along and saw a "miracle", started building Arjia and let the ISOs have their pick of the resources as well as having Tron and Clu take care of the Grid Bug problems.

In real life, taking away a predator population and leaving the prey alone causes the prey's numbers to explode and become damn near an invasive species. And since Flynn had been coddling the ISOs and giving them stuff, the ISOs didn't know how to survive without the excess when this entire time, ISOs were meant to live like nomadic hunter gatherers in the outlands who were experts in surviving without User intervention as well as being extremely fearsome fighters since they took on viruses and Grid Bugs themselves because they lacked a security monitor to do it for them?

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

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

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

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

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

She gives great hugs.

I found my old ISO story, “La voix de la mer.” I thought it was lost after my laptop died in 2015. Turns out I had a file hiding on an old hard drive, untitled, and I nearly cried. It’s unfinished, but I figured, why not share it? I was proud of it back when, and I want to share that with the fandom. I’ll be gradually posting all of it. <3 

--

Unfinished, written in November 2014.

Title inspired by the 1942 novella, Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea). "...written in 1941 by Jean Bruller under the pseudonym 'Vercors'. Published secretly in German-occupied Paris in 1942, the book quickly became a symbol of mental resistance against German occupiers."