#every other goddamn manga is ending with the main male character and most popular female character getting together

[flying-cat]

What the fuck does someone get out of reblogging my post with rude shit as if I can't see it

[nomadicism]

Be careful about having high expectations for Gen Lock. The series is created by Rooster Teeth Productions, who tend be to hit and miss. They created great series like Camp Camp, but they also created RWBY, which has a rep for having terrible writing in the later seasons. Characters are unlikable or Mary Sues; the plot is poorly structured and it made a lot of questionable choices. At this point, it could be either or. Only time will tell if it's the next Camp Camp or RWBY.

and

“I would be careful about having high expectations for Gen Lock if I were you. Gen Lock is created by Roaster Teeth Productions, who are also the creators of RWBY. That series went down hill after the 3rd season. Granted some of it had to do with the creator dying, but the writing dipped in quality. After watching the first and second ep, it reminds me a lot of VLD, including the humour. Reviewers said it didn’t dive into character motivation or any of the world building by the 5 ep point.”

Hi Anon, thank you for the Asks!

Given the wording of both of these, I assume they are both from you.

I’m going to try to reign in my salt here, but you happened to hit more than a few buttons with your Ask. Gonna keep this as brief as I can to focus on the core of my answer. I promise I’m not grumpy.

The opening sentence in both of these Asks does not come across well. I can give the benefit of the doubt b/c this is the Internet, but uh…yeah.

RWBY continues to enjoy great popularity and comes up frequently on my dash. I’ve never seen it, it’s definitely not my thing, but it’s still selling to someone, and my VLD mutuals that love it are still talking it up so I’m glad that they have another show to entertain them. I see merch everywhere, it’s got a Japanese dub and a manga adaptation and that’s pretty damn good for a web cartoon that came out of the U.S. Must not be that terrible as whole to merit all of that.

“Mary Sue” is a phrase that means absolutely nothing because everyone overuses it to mean any number of things about competent and powerful female characters, and most of them are incredibly subjective, and rarely ever applied to male characters who meet the same kinds of subjective goal-post shifting criteria.

Perhaps gen:LOCK will simply be the “first gen:LOCK” and not the “next anything.”

I didn’t find the humor in gen:LOCK to be like VLD at all.

Reviewers can eat my asshole.

And on that note:

Not every story benefits from a deep dive, or even a superficial exploration of character motivation or world-building.

Such things are very genre and plot dependent, and the perception of such is subjective.

Some of the greatest short stories, or even long-form novels don’t even bother with much of either if they are not necessary to advance the plot. Not everything needs to be Lord of the Rings or Ulysses.

Who had better “character motivation”, Frodo Baggins from the LotR trilogy or Ripely from Alien? What would “better” even mean for either of those genres? LotR and Alien are worlds apart, and yet, at the end of the day, the protagonists are fighting for survival against an unspeakable horror. The “journey” of their survival differs greatly, and those journeys are the point, the character motivations are really minimal and don’t require a lot of exploration.

Frodo’s character motivation can be summed up as: “save the fucking Shire by destroying a cursed evil ring” and a little bit of “Uncle Bilbo ruined me for the simple Hobbit life with his crazy stories.” While Ripley’s motivation is: “kill the xenomorphs before they kill me and my cat.” That’s it. Don’t even need in-character exposition or a flashback to describe Ripley’s. The genre hands it to you on a blood-soaked silver platter.

I don’t know what those reviewers were watching but the “character motivation” of the main characters that I saw in the pilot episode alone was pretty fucking obvious: HOLD THE LINE in a dystopian world were “freedom” hangs by a thread. They are trying to survive. That’s all it needs to be.

I don’t care why they joined the Vanguard. I have plenty of friends and family within various armed forces and their motivations range from complex to simple, but most of them are a variation on “I want to serve my country and my people.” That’s it, and that’s okay.

Additionally, Julian Chase’s backstory and motivation was made clear in the first 10 minutes through the positioning of him before the wall with his dead father’s memorial flag, and the conversation between the three most important people in his life: mother, sister, and fellow comrade-soldier/girlfriend (Miranda, great symbolism by the way in that name).

That pilot episode is Julian’s “super hero/science fiction origin story”. His Big Damn Hero moment is fueled by his “character motivation” to protect his loved ones, and inspired by the verses from his dead hero father’s favorite song: “Let the Good Times Roll.”

Any hyper-critical reviewer that missed that is full of shit.

And those verses?

“You only live once / But when you’re dead you’re gone / So let the good times roll”

That was clever and poignant foreshadowing, b/c GENRE. It also wasn’t super deep…and it didn’t have to be. It only needed to connect the threads of Julian’s introduction, who he is, something special that he shares with his mother, father, and girlfriend, and what his role will be in the show, and the nature of his being from here on out.

At the bare minimum, someone in the writers’ room is aware (even if only in passing) of the some of the most enduring questions that science-fiction (especially cyberpunk) has asked and navel-gazed over regarding the role of technology in extending human life, and what exactly defines “life” when one has left the meat-space. I’m not expecting gen:LOCK to be an exploration into the ethics and details of transhumanism/post-humanism/singularity philosophies and futurist dreams for humanity. It doesn’t have to be. They’ve already touched on the concepts and anyone who loves that sort of thing will notice.

My expectations for gen:LOCK are that—at worst—it will be as entertaining and to-the-point as the GI Joe cartoon in the 80s. I enjoyed GI Joe (pro-military propaganda aside), it was a regular thing for me to make the effort to watch. I didn’t love it like I did The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, or Robotech, or Voltron DotU, or Silverhawks, or Jem and the Holograms, but it was still fun and entertaining and it still is.

GI Joe didn’t waste time with a full exploration of Cobra Commander’s backstory or his motivations, nor did it do so with most of the Joes. The basics were all that was needed. GI Joe wasn’t about complexity and it didn’t need to be in order to tell an entertaining story while selling toys. Yes, sometimes you’d get some really interesting episodes that added dimension in between the more obvious filler. Shit, it took like 50+ episodes to get to a Destro-focused episode. I certainly wasn’t watching GI Joe for character motivations and world-building. I was watching because nearly every character had an interesting design and they all did unique things, and Cobra Commander was hilarious. I watched to see what they would come up with next.

Did I really need a compelling story behind Zartan, Zandar, and Zarana? Nope. They were fun villains that gave the heroes hell and spoke with shitty Australian accents. In the 80s, the Aussie accent was all the rage for edgy characters (oh Stingray…).

Do people remember anything about Scarlett other than she was the hot redhead?

I loved Scarlett, she was my She-Ra, and one of the main reasons why I watched GI Joe. But only the most hardcore GI Joe fans remember her stats and abilities. She was actually one of the most highly qualified and skilled Joes. From Scarlett’s Wikipedia article:

“Her primary specialty for the team is counter intelligence. Scarlett is additionally skilled in martial arts and acrobatics. She started training at age 9 with her father and three brothers, who were all instructors, and she earned her first black belt at age 15. Scarlett also graduated summa cum laude, and passed her Bar Exams to practice law, before moving into the military. She graduated from Advanced Infantry Training and Ranger School, and received special education in Covert Ops School, Marine Sniper School, Special Air Service School, and Marine Tae Kwon Do Symposium. Although she is as adept with standard weapons as any of her comrades, her weapon of choice is the XK-1 power crossbow, which fires various bolts with specialized functions. Scarlett is also a qualified expert with the M-14, M-16, M1911A1 Auto Pistol, M79 grenade launcher, M-3A1, M-700 Remington sniper rifle, MAC-10, throwing stars, garotte and KA-BAR (Combat Knife)”

Wow. Beautiful and striking appearance. High intelligence. Great martial prowess. Top shelf military training.What a goddamned Mary Sue.

So, if you’re still with me Anon, my point is that if gen:LOCK can be a “good enough” futuristic-cyberpunk-ish version of GI Joe that gives me fun and interesting-but-not-complex characters in command of infantry mechs, configurable jets, and a color coordinated team of save-the-day-big-damn-hero-style mecha who fight against a sinister force that has weaponized nanotech and colossal mechas that look like War of the Worlds meets Eldritch Horrors then I’ll be pretty fucking happy with it. The bar ain’t exactly high here.