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CHARACTER NAME: Quorra
FANDOM: Tron
CANON: Just before the final confrontation with Clu (i.e., right as they're reaching Flynn's exit portal)
WHAT THEY LOST: Memories of Sam. She'll recall that Flynn had a son, but she won't remember his name or having met him. This is one of her more important canon relationships, given that it's strongly hinted that she's developed feelings for Sam at the end of the film. The removal of this memory would also alter her perception of the immediately preceding events; she'll think the journey to preserve the Grid from Clu's control was something she and Flynn undertook without help and that the events were catalyzed by their own choice to act rather than Sam's galvanizing presence. Sam inspired Quorra and she learned a lot about the real world/Users from him--not just his stories, but in the way he behaved and his perspective generally. Losing this memory would therefore make her even more naive upon entering Paradisa than she would be otherwise.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER:
Quorra is native to a place called The Grid, a digital 'frontier' engineered by a man named Kevin Flynn. The Grid's main features are its sprawling city and the desolate Outlands that border it, along with the Sea of Simulation that serves as a protective barrier to Flynn's exit portal into the real world. Initially, the Grid was populated only by the various programs that participated in running its daily functions; the most important of these being Clu, the program Flynn created and charged with maintaining the health and welfare of the system. Things went rather well at first, and then one day an enormous population of digital beings known as isomorphic algorithms emerged spontaneously from the Sea of Simulation. These beings were unusual because they had no User; that is, they were not originally written by anyone from the Real World. Rather, they were a native evolution in Flynn's system. Incredulous, Flynn remarked that these beings were a miracle, and marveled at their ability to change his system to fit their existence.
Unfortunately, Clu was not nearly as impressed with the ISO population; he viewed them as a severe threat to the security and overall stability of the Grid and he took Flynn's words to mean that the ISO were in fact negatively warping the Grid for their own chaotic ends. Clu's increasing paranoia and agitation were exacerbated by Flynn's constant absences from the Grid (as he had another life in the Real World that demanded his attention) and, eventually, Clu morphed from a benevolent administrator into a scheming, traitorous tyrant. His first major act in the latter role was to institute a Purge of the ISO population, including the woman that Flynn appointed as Clu's co-admin, Radia. Quorra and her allies fought back against Clu's betrayals, but they were ultimately defeated: Clu exterminated every last ISO, save Quorra herself, and she only survived due to Kevin Flynn's intervention.
After finding her barely alive in the Outlands, Flynn took her in and she became his friend and apprentice. They lived together in this way until the events of Tron: Legacy, in which Flynn's son, Sam, finds his way into the Grid in order to find his father--who had been lost in the Grid for almost twenty years, thanks again to Clu's machinations.
Quorra rescues Sam from an untimely end in the city's games; she busts into the arena on a Light Runner (a two-person version of the digital world's lightcycle, which is itself analogous to a real world motorcycle), grabs him, and then busts out again, whereupon she facilitates the reunion between Sam and his father, Flynn.
The dinner the three share reveals Quorra's personality most tellingly: she is bright, friendly and incredibly naive. She loves reading books, particularly adventure books; she asks Sam if he knows Jules Verne personally. Having lived on the Grid since birth, Quorra has an insatiable curiosity about the real world and everything in it. Given that the digital world is enshrouded in eternal night and there is no foliage to speak of, even the sun and the grass would be objects of fascination to her. Later in the film, she listens eagerly to Sam's descriptions of his life on the outside and it's clear that she wants to have his experiences for herself.
Her inquisitive nature is coupled with a trusting openness that often makes her seem child-like and naive. Although Flynn counseled Sam to wait and watch instead of taking direct action against Clu, Quorra visits him after their meal to suggest he meet with an old friend of hers, a program named Zuse. Though Quorra honors and respects Flynn, it's shown in Tron: Evolution that she was once a far more reckless creature, and it's apparent that Sam's enthusiasm for an immediate and forthright counterattack on Clu's regime inspired her. However, Zuse is not truly anyone's friend; he's a program out for his own interest and he almost immediately betrays Sam after getting the guy into his club. That Quorra was wholly unable to see this in him and that she continued to have full, unquestioning trust in Zuse despite having not seen him in many cycles speaks to this open nature. She's upset at being wrong, especially since in resulted in the loss of Flynn's identity disc (an item that would grant Clu an even more absolute form of power), but she's also not the kind of person to dwell on losses and mistakes. Indeed, she would be lost if she were, given that she survived the mass murder of her entire race.
She also has a strong moral core owing to Flynn's teachings--when she allows Clu to capture her so that Flynn and Kevin can keep moving, Flynn remarks that she's 'removing herself from the equation'. Her willingness to do this suggests a compassionate selflessness and a personality that's able to see the broad, 'big-picture' goals with clear eyes and act accordingly, even when serving those greater goals means putting herself in harm's way. She's perfectly willing to endure whatever Clu has in store for her if it means Flynn and Sam's safety; luckily, they rescue her before any of that can come to pass.
It's key to understand that she did ALLOW herself to be captured, as Quorra is an eminently capable warrior: her prowess with the Grid's vehicles is evident from the start, and she does quite a bit of damage to Clu's minions during the battle in Zuse's club, though she temporarily loses an arm in the process. Flynn explains the miracle of Quorra's existence to Sam after they escape from the club; he explains how the ISOs seem to have their own kind of complex, digital genetic code. The possibilities this code represents are, to Flynn's mind, theoretically limitless in terms of their real-world application, particularly in the fields of science and medicine--a few delicate adjustments and Flynn is able to reboot Quorra's systems; her arm regenerates and she regains consciousness as though nothing had ever happened in the first place. It's these unique physical traits that make her precious in Flynn's eyes--and a threat in Clu's.
In sum: Quorra is fierce in battle but also guileless and trusting when it comes to people. She's friendly, outgoing and possesses a robust moral compass that has self-sacrifice as its essential foundation. She knows her way around the Grid very well, but she's never left it and has therefore never experienced or even heard of many facets of the real world (animals, trees, sunsets, summer breezes), save for what she's read in the few books Flynn had in his hideout.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
This wasn't the world she expected. Of course, all Quorra knew of life outside The Grid was confined to her imagination, to the stories she read in Flynn's books and what he told her. She had asked him questions every day, about what volcanoes were and what a bark or a purr sounded like and where was Italy? Flynn answered patiently, to the best of his ability, but the words were like embers, softly glowing, far removed from intensity of a real fire. His descriptions and her dreams were lightning bugs; she wanted the lightning.
And she had it now, and felt it, as she stood in the center of a grassy field and looked all around, the wind tousling her dark hair. Quorra opened her mouth and breathed deeply; the air tasted pure and sweet on her tongue and the moment was so new and wonderful that she almost forgot that she was alone. Flynn had explained that he lived in a city out in the real world, a city much like the one in the center of the Grid, though of course also very different. Quorra knew enough to recognize that empty fields were not common features of urban planning.
She wasn't worried about that yet, though. It was late afternoon--the first afternoon, late or otherwise, that she had ever experienced--and the sun was setting in the east. The bright sky looked like a painting, streaked with gold and orange and pink. The grass around her boots was suffused with these colors, as were the fluffy, amorphous shapes (clouds?) above the rubicund half-sphere (the sun!) sinking beneath the horizon. It hurt her eyes to look upon directly, but she couldn't turn away, even though her eyes were watering, blurring her vision.
She shut her eyes and marveled at the lights impressed under her eyelids, as though she had somehow absorbed the sunset into her body. Falling to her knees on the grass, Quorra's hand touched a book she hadn't before noticed on the ground. She saw that it was embossed with her name. Opening it with some curiosity, she began to read.
FIRST-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:
[After spending quite a bit of time paging randomly through her journal, Quorra finally decides to test out the mysterious device. Her tone is cheerful and bemused; she sounds more fascinated than frightened by her circumstances.]
I've read a lot of books, but I've never seen one before that writes itself while you're reading it. Or that talks to you. Are you all Users?
I would have thought I'd entered a simulation, but my eyes hurt a little too much from the sunlight for that. My own fault, but it's hard not to look closely at something you've never seen before!
INTENT:
Well, for one thing, she's the polar opposite to my OTHER character in the game, at least in terms of personality. Where he's reticent, she's social, where he's moody, she's optimistic and gregarious. So there's that. I also feel that a character like Quorra offers a lot of opportunities for development and growth; it's clear from the film and even the game that she's still growing as a person and there's a lot she doesn't know or understand about life generally, much less life outside of a computer system. In Paradisa, she'd have a lot to explore and question.