WRECK-IT RALPH AU JUMPSCARE
Considering making this into a fanfic if I have the motivation but MORE IMPORTANTLY
I was inspired to make this by, of course, the wonderful wonderful @/randomalistic, as well as these three amazing fics:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
(I actually follow the creator of the last one so here is their Tumblr as well @/quinnzorian)
This au has trans characters and that is addressed multiple times and is a plot point and bigots don’t like that. So, if YOU have a problem with that, I don’t care, but also, just get off Tumblr have you seen this place us gays are everywhere and every time you post a hate comment we add 5 genders.
NOW ONTO THE YAPPING WHICH WILL BE SECTIONED AND NOT IN GREEN FOR MY OWN SANITY
Now, while I’d love to do a full fledged rant on every single thing the story would contain, there are, unfortunately, two problems with that, the main one being: I honestly don’t have it fully fledged out. While I have a general premise, there are details in between that I simply haven’t filled in, which is why this will be more of a summary than a full fledged “this is the au and everything about it”. The other reason, is that there is the possibility of me turning this into a fanfiction, and, I obviously wouldn’t want to give too much away. Consider this a “sneak peak”.
To review what I’ve stated previously, our main protagonist is Turbo instead of Ralph. BUT instead of them being swapped, Ralph (along with Felix and Calhoun) aren’t present in the story. So this is NOT a full fledged swap au. Vanellope is still our deuteragonist (which basically means secondary protagonist. Normalize this word guys I don’t see it used as often as I think it should be) while our supporting characters are Flash and Dash, aka: the alive Turbo Twins. Our antagonist, however, is King Candy. The main difference with him? No one is pretending to be King Candy, he is the true and rightful ruler of Sugar Rush. But, more on him and Vanellope’s changes later.
Then, obviously, there is the fact that there are main characters of this au that are trans. And that isn’t just for funsies it’s a genuine plot point and it along with transphobia itself, is addressed. The last notable change is the fact that almost the entire plot is different. Since no one ever meets Calhoun, it means no one ever went into Hero’s Duty. Which means: no cybugs. There will almost 100% be an overarching antagonist besides King Candy. Though, that isn’t a detail that I’ll be sharing (whether it’s because I haven’t figured it out or I want to keep some big reveals a secret, you guess)
Section 2 - Going ‘Turbo’
Turbo did still get his game unplugged, and it was in basically in the same fashion. He went over to RoadBlasters to sabotage the game (though his intent wasn’t to kill the characters, it was instead to either simply make the kids stop playing since they’d think it was glitched or get it unplugged, but he had no real intent of murdering them himself)
But, quickly after, someone did go over to play his game, but, due to him not being there and therefore rendering it unplayable, his game was put out of order and set to be unplugged almost immediately. He saw the ‘out of order’ sign get taped to his console from RoadBlasters, since they were right across from each other, and quickly abandoned what would’ve been simply a self sabotage mission.
Little did he know, he just made it worse.
He raced (ha) back to his game, only to find that the Turbo Twins had already left, rendering the game unplayable anyways. Unfortunately for him, the game started to get unplugged while he was inside. So, now he’s driving as fast as he can in an attempt to get out before the void catches up to him and sucks him into an abyss of nothingness.
His car, and himself, make it about halfway out, before the rest of him is sucked back in, the parts of him that had come near to escaping disintegrating despite his protest. And the rest was history.
Turbo was never to be seen again.
Section 3 - The revival of TurboTime
In 2010, TurboTime was not only plugged back in, but actually regained decent popularity due to being an older game not many places had available to play anymore. Though, it was not only the same game as before, but the same arcade cabinet. The game was back, and Turbo was back with it.
Now, there is an explanation to this, mainly supported by the wonderful Randomalistc.
In Randomalistic’s video, she points out how, technically, there’s no reason unplugging a game should erase that much of its data in most cases. And, she’s right when you think about it.
Think about turning off your phone while you have an app open. Sometimes it closes the app, sometimes it even deletes data, but, most of the time, it stays open (and I know that arcade machines are very different but just hear me out.) Going by that logic, along with the logic that, shown from a spin off book which shows the video game characters actually don’t need electricity to survive, I think that unplugging a game mid-use would have a different result than unplugging it while it was on the start or game over screen for example.
So, while unplugging it while inactive and with so few characters present in the game (because usually most, if not all, have evacuated by the time it’s unplugged) would result in more of a hard reset due to so much being ‘wrong’, doing it mid-use, especially with most of the characters inside the game, is more likely, but not guaranteed, to cause the game to simply freeze.
Why does any of this, specifically the amount of characters present, matter in Turbo’s situation?
Well, because the game was actively attempting to play, due to the kid having tried to play before it had been unplugged, meaning that since Turbo is the game’s only playable character, him having been driving down to the last second the game was unplugged tricked his game into thinking someone was playing (side note, this only worked because he was driving. If he would have been running, it wouldn’t have had the same effect).
Not only that, but his game only has three characters, technically meaning a third of the game’s characters were still active while it was being unplugged. These very specific factors he had no clue about, allowed Turbo to get very lucky (he was also protected with this special device called plot armor) and cause his game to freeze rather than reset.
So, when the game inevitably got plugged back in (my explanation for this is that, while Litwack had a lot of games, TurboTime was the first one he bought with the arcade’s earnings alone and, due to holding it so dear to his heart, he never got rid of it. He ended up simply plugging it back in to test his luck with it) years later, Turbo was in the same mindset as before, and felt as if little to no time had passed.
Little did he know, oh so much time had passed. And so much hatred for him had started to build up with it.
Section 4 - Rumors And A Glitch
Now, while it’s fair that distrust and maybe some hatred of Turbo may have been warranted (after all, he still did attempt to sabotage RoadBlasters. Not kill, but the former’s still not great), at this point, the hatred has been pushed so over the top it’s kind of insane.
The main reason for this is the older characters, who lived through the experience, fear mongering all the newer ones. They’re telling the story differently, making out Turbo to be much worse than he truly was, even before the RoadBlasters incident. And on rumors and word of mouth alone? The RoadBlasters incident went from
“Turbo was kind of a showboating asshole, and what he attempted to do to RoadBlasters was not ok at all. Thankfully, no one (except Turbo) got physically hurt. We should learn from this experience.”
“Turbo was one of the worst people you could meet, he was such an asshole, and he went to RoadBlasters with the intent to KILL. That’s how you’ll end up if you don’t stick to your programming.” (Side note, this last part is also important for later)
So in short he’s been a bit exaggerated to say the least.
Flash and Dash did know about all this Turbo slander, but not wanting to become more outcast than they were already forced to be due to now being homeless, they didn’t try to defend him despite knowing most of these claims were not only untrue, but near downright harassment. I’m sure that won’t come back to haunt them regarding their relationship with Turbo in any way.
So now, it’s 2010, Turbo is back, and he is less trusted than ever. Not only that, but due to both his game getting unplugged and barely surviving the incident, plus, him being half in-half out of the game when it was unplugged, his code has been heavily damaged and he’s been left with a glitch (in this house we love glitch Turbo)
At this point, Turbo is spending most of his time inside his own game. While that seems obvious since usually glitches can’t leave their games, since Turbo was halfway out of his game when his code broke and thus he became a glitch, with some strained effort he can break through the barrier. Despite this, yes, he still stays around TurboTime most days for both his own reasons and because the Turbo Twins are kinda scared of him leaving and fucking up another game, so they’re a bit reluctant to let him go anywhere (especially alone).
Though Turbo mainly stays in the game to avoid other people and attempt to fix the parts of his code that were broken. While he does end up learning quite a bit about code in the next few years, he never ends up being able to fix much other than having a slightly better control over the glitch, though it still isn’t great.
Not only are there changes regarding the relationship between Vanellope and the rest of Sugar Rush, but with the code itself and what both she and King Candy were intended to be.
To start off, Vanellope, as I mentioned, isn’t the “secret princess” anymore. She was going to be the ruler, but the developers scrapped her and made King Candy instead. When they scrapped Vanellope however, they didn’t fully delete her, so she ended being in the game, just not as she was originally programmed. No one knows who is she is or how/why she’s in the game. All Vanellope knows is her name and that she wants to be a racer, but they won’t let her because of a few reasons.
First off, she’s a glitch. They don’t dislike her because she’s a glitch, more so because they don’t want to risk what might happen if a glitch did get out on the track. Secondly, King Candy, along with everyone else, doesn’t know who she is. KC is honesty worried that she’s some kind of virus or bug that somehow got into the game and took the form of something that may resemble one of the racers and maybe that’s why she’s a glitch. He isn’t excluding her out of malice but more out of concern and safety for the citizens of Sugar Rush, as well as the game itself. Sure, his actions are harsh, but he doesn’t know who she is and he’s only doing what he thinks it’s right.
While it doesn’t fully excuse his actions, it does give him a clear motive that isn’t based on hatred. Most of his actions are driven purely by him doing what he believes is in the best interest of Sugar Rush’s citizens and their safety.
Another thing that’s “changed” is the entering system. Instead of any kind of payment, a character is registered onto the leaderboard by moving their carts onto one of the starting squares on the track. This is mainly because the whole payment idea as a whole was created by Turbo in the original movie. So, since he isn’t King Candy, it was never put into place.
The reason Vanellope doesn’t just put her cart into one of the squares so she’s registered into the race, is because, if you include her, there aren’t as many squares as there are racers, since she wasn’t intended to be played.
There aren’t many other notable changes. Mainly since Vanellope still resides in Diet-Cola Mountain in secret and there’s no change in any of the other racers either.
Section 6 - Trans-Coded Characters (ha get it)
Moving back to the transphobia plot I mentioned earlier, which isn’t an absolutely huge part of the story, but it isn’t a minor part either. The reason there's transphobia at all is mainly due to the mindsight of “oh, he tried to change his program (i.e. he was trans) even before the RoadBlasters incident! It was the first sign and half of us missed it!” Which is obviously not how it works.
I think a lot of the characters in Litwack’s Arcade know that being trans in no way shape or form makes you a bad person, they’re just trying to be, what they think, is “logical”. And, you can’t fully blame them for being, at the very least, skeptical of someone actually acting on it. Because in more cases than not, changing how you look, your name, or how you sound, would very much alert the player of the game “acting up”. So, in a way, it actually makes sense that it would be so frowned upon. Turbo had a very specific situation that helped him get out of this struggle though.
When TurboTime was first being programmed, their original plan was called ‘TurbineTime’. It was essentially the same game, the only difference being Turbo’s name and gender, because he was originally female. However, they ended up scrapping this, since they changed the name of the game to ‘TurboTime’ and thought Turbo was a more masculine name. Along with that, they were like ‘oh it’s a racing game, we should direct that more towards boys instead’ (cause y’know it was the early 80’s and that wasn’t an uncommon mindset. Still isn’t actually when you think about it but whatever).
All they really did was add and delete a few pixels and change his win animation. Where he would originally take off his helmet in one hand and hold the trophy in the other hand, he’s instead doing his iconic thumbs up and saying his catchphrase.
Now, even though the players knew him as Turbo, both Turbo himself and Flash and Dash, knew him as ‘Turbine’. So, when they first were plugged in, that’s how they introduced him. Everyone in the arcade knew him as Turbine for the first year or so. But, eventually, the more he heard the players call him ‘Turbo’, say that ‘he’ was cool, and that ‘his’ game was cool, compared to hearing others call him ‘Turbine’, he started to resonate much more with how he was addressed by the players. He expressed this to the Turbo Twins, and when they started calling him Turbo and all that, he realized it definitely felt way better. More him, despite his programming technically still having him in as a girl (the devs didn’t think it was something that needed to be changed, they simply needed to change his appearance. He even still had his old voice/voicelines, they were just unused until after hours)
So, eventually, Turbo did express much more openly that he liked being Tirbo instead of Turbine, and not very many people had a problem with it. It was only after he ‘went Turbo’ that they started being wary of changing your program in any way shape or form, including being trans, which is why it became much more frowned upon.
Thankfully, Vanellope ended up mostly dodging this bullet. Due to her not technically being an official character, it didn’t really affect anyone if she was trans. And, trust me, she made it very clear to correct them even while she was being chased by the donut cops.
King Candy didn’t really mind and, at the very least, figured cooperating with this change of hers would opt for less backlash when it came to them trying to arrest her. And while none of the racers explicitly deadname her or anything (since they still do bully her), they very much bring it up as just another jab to why she shouldn’t be in the game.
It’s just like kids in real life woah
And, yes, Turbo and Vanellope 100% bond over this, don’t think for a second they don’t.
And that’s the au in premise! It’s obviously not fully worked out, and I apologize for how long this ramble is, but I am excited to possibly expand on it further! I’d love to hear thoughts or even questions regarding this, so feel free to comment or send to my askbox any feedback and/or questions you have! Hope you enjoyed this rant that was way too fucking long
