Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2013 19:25:44 GMT -5
Who am I? Just a conscience!
Introduce yourself
Hey, howdy, hey! The name's Kat, and I wished upon a star from definitely already here. Let's try this again, shall we?. My other imaginary friends include Raksha, Attina, and Kate. Alan and I are so very eager to join the Worlds of Disney circle of life!
Character basics
Character name: Alan Bradley
Age: Early 30s
Species: User
Birthplace: Chicago
Movie: TRON
Custom title: Alan One
Why: Why'd you pick this character?
Honestly, if I’m not careful, I could probably write a whole essay on this subject. I’ve been planning this for a long time, and my reaction when I first thought about the idea was actually to wonder why I hadn’t considered it before. For one thing, he and Tron really need a chance to meet. Alan is also smart, likeable, and someone I’d love to spend time with. He could be considered a good role model, but he’s not an incredible Warrior like Tron – and while brilliant, he isn’t a flashy, charismatic supergenius like Flynn, either. He’s admirable primarily because he is a good man who works very hard and does his best to treat other people well.
Character appearance (try to get at least 2 or 3 sentences for each section)
Hair description:
Alan’s brown hair is styled to look professional, but not stuffy. Seldom is a hair out of place.
Facial description/mood/expressions:
While Alan’s large, gold-rimmed glasses may partly obscure his face, they don’t make him any harder to read than he would be without them. Although he definitely knows how to have fun, Alan will become serious immediately if the situation calls for it. When there are no problems or responsibilities that require his attention, anyone who spent much time with him would discover that he actually has a good sense of humor (even if his serious nature is still such that some of his friends have far too much fun teasing him).
Clothing style:
At work, Alan dresses very conservatively. The rest of the time, though his attire will often be more casual, he still does his best never to look unpresentable or “sloppy”. Although he often wears some sort of jacket, he does have the sense not to do so in Florida when it’s summertime.
Body build:
Tall and slim, Alan is part of the unusually large group of people at ENCOM who completely defy most stereotypes regarding computer programmers’ physiques. He was blessed with a fast metabolism, and he works out when he can, though with his schedule it is sometimes difficult to find the time.
Any unique traits (optional):
Original character analysis (In your own words and please be thorough)
Personality:
Earnest and hardworking, Alan tends to expect others to value fairness and honesty as much as he does. While he knows this isn’t always the case, he has a very hard time accepting the idea that anyone he considers a friend would do anything truly malicious. As a result, he may sometimes give his trust to someone who doesn’t truly deserve it, and if that happens, he will have an extremely difficult time admitting to himself that his faith was misplaced.
If he’s frustrated by something at work, Alan’s irritation will be clear; this can occasionally lead people who don’t know him well to think he’s annoyed with them. Anyone who spends enough time around him will also notice that he’s not the most patient of people, by any means.
When he sees injustice, Alan will move to correct it, though unlike his Program, he is highly unlikely to get into a physical fight. He would be capable of violence as a last resort, if he needed to defend someone, but in general, he’ll find other ways to do battle.
History:
Alan is the son of James and Elizabeth Bradley. His parents never really meant for him to be an only child, but that’s how things worked out. Despite attempts on their part to compensate by getting him involved in all sorts of activities where he would have the chance to interact with other children his own age, the boy was perfectly content to go off and play on his own.
Alan’s parents worked very hard at being fair to each other, sharing equally in household chores and in caring for their young son. Even though Elizabeth quit her job for a couple of years to be a stay-at-home mother, her husband never saw that as an excuse to neglect his own responsibilities at home.
Though he did get into trouble on occasion, Alan was, for the most part, pretty easy to raise. If his parents hadn’t made it so clear that they trusted him and respected the fact that he was a person, no matter how young and inexperienced, it might have been different, but as it was, he realized his parents wanted what was best for him, and usually chose to obey them, even if he didn’t always like it much.
When Alan was nine years old, he went to see The Day the Earth Stood Still, and was fascinated by the robot character, Gort. In the movie, robots were created to aggressively enforce the peace, but the main idea the boy got from the film wasn’t about some alien entity threatening humanity into behaving properly. Though Gort could have destroyed the Earth, this was prevented because a compassionate being had chosen not to retaliate even after humans attacked him, and the robot had chosen to comply with his wishes. Love and a desire to protect had clashed with destructive power and won.
Especially given the threat of nuclear war people talked about constantly, this was a very powerful message. Artificial intelligence could be a force for good like nothing the world had ever seen. At first, he wanted to somehow build robots like Gort, but as he got a little older, his thoughts turned in a more practical (but, to him, no less exciting) direction.
When Alan was fifteen, the company his father worked for closed its office in his home city. While the family worried for a time that this might not be the case, the company ultimately offered James another job – and a very good one, at that, although it did require the family to relocate to San Francisco. Fortunately, this happened during the summer, and they were able to get there just before the start of a new school year.
By this time, Alan had learned more about the real-world possibilities of artificial intelligence. They captured his attention and imagination every bit as much as any science fiction movie ever had. Working with computers and Programs, he could one day achieve his dream.
Alan worked hard all through high school, and while his social life might have suffered a little, the work paid off. He was accepted into Purdue University, and even managed to earn scholarships.
Shortly after he started grad school, he learned that his father had cancer. Fortunately, it had been caught relatively early, and James’s prognosis was good. Still, Alan couldn’t help but worry, especially after the next time he saw James in person – he’d never seen his father look so sick and weak, though the younger man knew this was probably a result of the treatment, not the cancer itself.
Though she clearly tried not to show this too much in front of James, it wasn’t hard to see that Elizabeth, too, was frightened for her husband. One day, when he wasn’t around, she actually broke down and cried: something Alan had never seen her do before, and never would again. If he had ever had any doubts about how much his parents loved each other, they would have vanished in that moment.
Fortunately, James recovered, and was well enough that he and Elizabeth could take a nice vacation to Europe for their 30th anniversary. In the meantime, Alan had gotten a job to pay for his living expenses and the part of tuition scholarships didn’t cover, to ensure that his parents would not be worried about him financially while James was sick. With a lot of careful saving, he was also able to help fund his parents’ anniversary vacation.
Alan went on to get his doctorate, still at Purdue. It was a very good school, which had managed to exceed his already high expectations; he enjoyed his time there. Moreover, he’d made good friends there, some of whom he remains in contact with to this day.
After graduation, Alan hoped to be able to move back to California, in order to be closer to family. During his research for his dissertation, he had learned a great deal about a company called ENCOM, and some of the groundbreaking developments happening there. He applied for a job at their Los Angeles office, and the people there were quite happy to have him. Alan was pleasantly surprised when, not long afterwards, one of his old friends from Purdue also started working there.
In time, two other people who would eventually be important in Alan’s life also joined the company. One was a gifted young programmer named Kevin Flynn – but Flynn was fired just months after he’d started working at ENCOM.
Far more importantly, there was Lora Baines. She was beautiful, and though he hadn’t gotten a chance to talk with her, he knew she was intelligent; she was already beginning to be recognized for her work. There was an obvious confidence about her that never read as arrogance, and he admired her for that. Unfortunately, she was also Flynn’s girlfriend.
If that hadn’t been the case, he would definitely have tried to strike up a conversation with her, but as it was, given that he was very attracted to her, he would have felt uncomfortably like he was trying to steal her away from Flynn (even if it was only a matter of talking to someone he respected), and that was something he’d never do to anyone.
With Flynn no longer at the company, Alan didn’t really have any way of knowing exactly when Flynn and Lora broke up. Besides, Alan had found a reason to be somewhat more preoccupied than usual with work.
It was several months later when Alan and Lora actually really met for the first time. Then, she asked him to go with her… to a showing of The Day The Earth Stood Still. True, it wouldn’t have been hard to find out about Alan’s love for that particular movie, but it seemed like a very good sign.
The date went well, and there was most definitely chemistry between them. They didn’t kiss, but even simply being around her just felt right. And that feeling only grew stronger as time went on: when he was with her, all could seem well with the world in a way that wasn’t true at any other time.
It would be some time before things progressed to that point, though; what he did know immediately was that he really wanted to go on a second date with her. This time, he was the one who asked her out.
In his opinion, their third date was even better than the first two; afterwards, the two shared their first kiss and started dating.
The first time he told her that he loved her, it was less an act of courage than a truth so undeniable that concealing it would have been contrary to his nature.
By 1982, Lora and Alan had gotten an apartment together. He was deeply in love with his girlfriend, and knew that she loved him, too. Alan had been working, for some time, on a new Security Program.
Tron.
TRON-JA-307020.
Alan knew Tron was special, but he couldn’t have known that the breakthrough he’d hoped to help make – the miracle he’d been looking for most of his life – had already been achieved. Yet, if Alan had had some way of finding out that Tron was a living, thinking person, with hopes and dreams, it would have seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
At ENCOM in general, things had taken a turn for the worse. Edward Dillinger and his Master Control Program were running things. The MCP was allegedly supposed to make things more efficient, but for Alan and anyone else whose opinion he knew on that subject, the only thing it ever did was create a lot of problems. That was one reason Tron was so important: as a Program that ran independently of the MCP, Tron would be able to make sure the MCP couldn’t do anything it should not be doing.
But as much as he disliked the MCP, Alan was unaware that it was already doing… pretty much everything it shouldn’t, and that Dillinger knew about this.
One day, Alan tried to run his Tron program, but was denied access. Dillinger had cut everyone with Group 7 access out of the system – he’d claimed this was because someone with Group 7 access had been “tampering”.
When Alan told Lora what had happened, she immediately concluded that the hacker must have been Flynn. She wanted to go to Flynn’s Arcade, to warn Flynn that Dillinger knew what he was up to.
Normally, Alan and Lora didn’t talk about Flynn. It served no purpose except to make Alan jealous, which, in turn, made him annoyed with himself; he was very aware that such jealousy could only have harmful effects for everyone. Yet, though Alan knew Lora loved him, the idea of losing her was too painful to even think about.
When Alan and Lora arrived at the Arcade and confronted Flynn, Flynn admitted that he had tried to break into the system. Then he explained that this was because Dillinger had claimed credit for several video games Flynn had invented. Flynn had been trying to gather evidence of this theft, and though he didn’t have that yet, Alan believed Flynn’s story completely. From what Alan knew of the type of person Flynn was and the type of person Dillinger was, this just made sense. Besides, Alan could see that Lora believed Flynn was telling the truth.
The only way for Flynn to get the evidence he needed would be if Alan could get Tron running, so that Tron would be able to take out the MCP. When Flynn said he might be able to forge them Group 6 access if he could get into ENCOM, Alan and Lora agreed to help him break in.
Flynn seemed very casual about the whole “breaking and entering” thing, but it might have been a good thing that Alan was both nervous and focused on the group’s new mission – if Flynn was trying, at all, to win Lora back, Alan didn’t have time to start thinking about that.
Of course, Flynn (though Alan didn't know this) took a slight, unexpected detour once they all got into ENCOM, but he was still able to help.
Alan managed, though he didn’t entirely think of it in these terms, to communicate with Tron, giving the Program the information needed on how to erase the MCP. With the MCP gone, Flynn was able to get evidence of Dillinger’s crimes, and Dillinger went to prison. Flynn finally got credit for his work, was made CEO of ENCOM, and promoted both Alan and Lora to the board of directors.
Ambitions:
*Find a way to continue his work
*Make sure those he cares about are content and safe
*Eventually marry Lora and grow old with her
Strengths & abilities:
*Intelligent
*A very loyal friend
*Fair
*Kind
*Hardworking
Flaws:
*Can be impatient
*Stubborn
*Sometimes gets very preoccupied with his work
*Occasionally the jealous type, as much as he dislikes that about himself
*If he trusts someone he shouldn’t, he may refuse to admit that his faith is completely unjustified, even after pretty much everyone else has given up on the individual.
Likes:
*Lora
*Tron
*His work
*Technology, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence
*Classic sci-fi
*Flynn
Dislikes:
*Waste of talent or intelligence
*Dishonesty
*When people overlook Lora’s accomplishments
*When people overlook anyone’s accomplishments
*Unfair accusations, whether directed at him or at someone else
*Serious arguments with Lora
Fears:
*Losing Lora
*Losing anyone who’s close to him
*Somehow becoming unable to continue his work
Anything to add?: Okay, sure, Alan’s not going to be off battling four opponents at once, the way Tron can. In fact, Alan Bradley is very much someone who could exist in our world with no need for Disney Magic at all. But he will never stop fighting for what he believes in. He also has a very functional and realistic relationship with Lora – the type of relationship that is, unfortunately, incredibly rare in the Disney universe.
RP SAMPLE:
Please see Raksha.