#genlock spoiler tag

[thesouppond]

I'm taking the open tag and opportunity for genlock content!!!! Can't show the last line of my most recent script cause it'll be a spoiler but uh here's a dumbass thumbnail for my next Genlock Reloaded prologue (THE LAST ONE BEFORE GOING INTO THE PROPER PLOT WOOO)

Last Line Meme

Tagged by @anneapocalypse, so why not

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote (or the last wip you drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or however many you like).

Exhausted and maimed and lost, Sinclair really expected them to kill him. The value that had kept him alive this long wasn’t just waning, the way the usefulness of any victim of torture might when the damage was too much to bear, but actively crumbling under the weight of the Union’s false expectations.

This is from a very, very slow-going re-write of gen:LOCK season 2 where I'm trying to turn versions of s2's plot points into something... not Like That™. Getting to Sinclair's introduction is actually what stalled me since his part of s2 requires even more intensive re-writes to make use of literally any of it. Especially as he didn't have an on-screen personality before s2 did it's thing.

I'm on chapter 13 of 14 of part one, after which there's a whole other 14 chapters in part two. ...I'll get back on it eventually, lmao.

I'm not active enough around here to know other writers or artists to tag at this point so consider this an open tag to anyone I guess!

[grifalinas]

Weller: I found out there were dangers of copying an artificial brain so I stopped doing that

Director Church: This is my ai, this is my ai’s ai copy of my dead wife, and this is my ai’s seven ai children who are all piloting a singular body while they murder all my soldiers, and this is the army of ai copies of my ai’s ai copy of my dead wife that I made in a desperate attempt to keep the project going

[werewolf-cuddles]

gen:LOCK season 2 feels like the new writers went “Oh, so you actually got invested in the world and characters set up by the first season? Well, fuck you. Everything’s morally grey now, the world they’re fighting for control over is already screwed, and we’re going to start killing off main characters because fuck you if you actually liked them.”

I’m not the only one seeing malicious intent in the writing this season, right?

[bloodraven55]

also idc about genlock s2 after everything ive heard about it but i feel the need to point out that its very clearly an hbo product now so if you wanna blame anyone for the show going to shit then point the finger at them instead of rt who have next to no creative control anymore

[your-dar-ling]

Gen:Lock 2.5 Re(view/cap)

I think this is the best episode in the season so far. I really enjoyed the characterization in it. Let's get to it.

Cammie

Okay so it seems obvious that they're pulling a Rogue One situation. If this is meant to be the definitive end to the Gen:Lock story, alot of what happened before now makes alot of sense.

I absolutely LOVED Cammie's story. I don't think it had the time it needed to breathe, but for what it's worth they made it work. Given all that we've learned this season the progression of her character from moment to moment seemed very plausible to me. She summed it up pretty well with the idea that she needs an "us."

Here's my thing with the discourse from this week:

This person (who I'm anonymizing for obvious reasons) would be right if what the Union was planning on doing was "genociding humanity." Let's break it down.

The Union does not think they are genociding humanity. They think they are giving humanity a new home in the face of climate collapse. We can call it a lie or a fantasy, but so too follows for all religions because the Omnifaith is literally every religion. It's obviously not a 1-to-1 because the real world doesn't have magical glowy nanobots to yeet your body away, but like if we're willing to suspend your disbelief that far to separate these fictional circumstances from the real world ones, I just don't understand how a person could come to a conclusion as if they aren't.

There is already proof that they are not just murdering people. Gen:Lock as a concept is just temporarily killing yourself to pilot a mecha. It's why one can't "exceed uptime," if one does, their brain will literally be unable to revive their consciousness. They never explicitly say this but I think it's pretty clear. They are not just "falling asleep," their entire person is moving from place to place. And if all it took to "die" was uploading their consciousness into a digital framework, disregarding your body, Gen:Lock is a weaponized, repeated and voluntary suicide they've been participating in since Day 1. If anything Gen:Lock exceptuonalizes the concept, making martyrdom of it. I don't think there's too much here to there for Cammie, who helped develop the thing.

But okay fine. Fine. Maybe the Flow is worse because it's not reversible. There's no returning to your body when you ascend like in Gen:Lock. Two things: the flow literally brought Yaz back to life (although I don't know if she's aware of it), and Brother Tate -- who wholeheartedly believes in his message -- was brought to and fro as well. But even beyond that, Chase cannot return to his body. And moreover, he chose to be stuck in his bot brain forever. Does that mean Chase committed suicide? I think it's more complex than that.

And you might be asking "why doesn't the show just show what it is like in the Flow?" Because the Polity is based on science, which is a necessarily evidence based field. But in contrast to that, the Union is based on faith. Evidences of faith are not literal. It wouldn't be an interesting story if we just got to saw whether or not they were right or wrong. Showing all these people that believe in it is the evidence. But in case that wasn't enough there's alot more i.e. them actively developing it to be more sustainable.

I don't think the show is saying Cammie's suicide was a "good" thing. I'm not down for ascribing moral quality of any kind to suicide. But I don't think the show is glorifying, but the show's characters definitely are. I think the show is simply showing that Cammie did what felt right to her. Why she did what she did and the coercive qualities of the Omnifaith are all important in this conversation! And I think ultimately Cammie didn't even think she was committing suicide, or at the very least she wasn't in a place to acknowledge it. But I think this rough discourse is what makes her story work.

Other G:L

Chase please go to therapy.

Val please go to therapy.

The fact that Yaz mindshared Kazu's DEATH is soooooooooo interesting and should've been way more than just a "talk." Girl's been paid dust.

...oh yea Kazu yea I guess we don't care about him anymore lol

Polity

Marin's characterization this episode was absolutely flawless. Her little speech gave so much context to her as a character. I can finally get behind watching her now that I know. She's not paranoid or cold. She loves her nation and its people. But she values their lives over their choices, and that leads her down a dark path. She's just got a bad case of "tough love." I feel like I've met the exact type of person her character is hyperbolizing.

Union

Wash rinse repeat.

No Man's Land

The gays keep winning. I don't have much to say about Sinclair, but his conflict is nice. Even they struggle with helping others when it's at expense to themselves. I think what Chris says in response is the theme of the whole episode:

"You give people a choice. That's your third option. And she's made hers."

Conclusion

I'm so ready for this show to end. In both a "I wanna see where this is going" and a "if I have to look at one more discourse I'm gonna explode" kind of way. I'm excited for next week though, which is at least better than the last.

Final Ranking: 8/10

[texas-hates-taxes-too]

Yknow I really want to believe that what happened with Gen:Lock was almost entirely HBOs fault but I'm just not sure if I trust RT that much

[modkatisbacc]

I HAVENT SEEN THE NEW EPISODE OF GEN:LOCK YET BUT I GOT ALL THE GOODS ( aka people talking about it on discord) so let me share some nice... head canons..

-The team have slumber parties in the mindshare. I mean that’s what you can use your houses for!

- Colonel (GENERAL???) Marin is used to getting hugged by Cammie and she loves it. Don’t tell anyone tho

- Along with the party, Leon even had custom figurines made of the team because he thought it would be cool.

- the bunnies are used as pillows but hear me out if you can make bunnies in the mind scape you can make bunny pillows. If you can make bunny pillows you can smite your youngest sibling. Ya.. ya feel me?

Thats all for now I am TIRED and COLD also I’m putting tons of SPOILER tags on THIS.

[tumblezwei]

Just heard about the genlock sex scene thing going around and now more than ever do I want warner bros to stay the fuck away from rwby (I know that rt no longer has any part in the animating of the show since they sold over the rights but come on hbo really really) what's with hbo and thinking mature means uncensored sex. Anyway i thought it was weird that the animation in this season feels less polished than the last now it all makes sense (badly animated sex scene aside) The writers for this season are missing the mark by making everything nitty gritty and dark. It feels a lot how it would be if fanon rwby somehow switched places with the writers

I need you to know that this is how I heard that there's an uncensored sex scene in Genlock and I want you to carry that weight.

I haven't really kept up with season 2, mainly bc my hyperfixations will not allow me to thanks Arcane, but some of the things I've heard about and the clips I've seen are kinda yikes. I'm sure the animators and writers are doing their best, but yeah I could tell pretty early on that something was strange about the animation.

[bumblebye]

[nerdgasrnz]

I thought he was gonna do this but he actually handled it pretty well...

Joke source:

[raynavelbasejr]

that’s definitely Dri in the union holon, “it” recognized miranda’s voice and ran off oh NO

[grifalinas]

What if RT completely blindsided us and ended up having Chase and Miguel become a thing? Like what if we’re supposed to expect a boring heterosexual love triangle and instead everyone acts like mature adults who feel their feelings and have conflict as a result but not to an unreasonable degree and then after moving on Chase starts to fall for his best friend who’s been there for him the entire time he’s been back, whose first reaction to finding out he was alive was to go to him and try to just jump back into their old dynamic because nothing was more important than having his buddy back? What if they did that? What if RT just fucking did that?

[strxngersmind]

Union Mech speaking in “The Best Defense”

[simplykorra]

Sure am glad I got all excited about Lindsay being in GenLock =/

[your-dar-ling]

Gen:Lock 2.3 Re(cap/view)

LOVED this episode. Very needed. I finally feel like this story is going somewhere. Let's get into it.

There's finally enough on every front to to divide sections into plotlines instead of characters!!

Gen:Lock Team

YES. YES. YES. YES. YES. Everyone is going through it still, but I love the way it is being presented in this episode as a loss of boundaries. Delicious content. The ways it manifests range from funny to depressing, sometimes even both. I really like the example where Chase walks in on his ex doing the naughties because he's literally got door knocking trauma now. Absolutely hilarious. There's also hologram discrimination now? I mean Chase is the only living hologram there is. I guess it only really applies to him. The entire universe is gaslighting him.

I appreciate the fact that Yaz is now getting some more time to develop. She's been vulnerable about her position, but I don't think she can bear anyone else committing the world's most cynical suicide, which I think makes Cammie in this chapter suuuper interesting.

Of course she just wants to know more about the tech. Of course she's curious about how it works and how people live when they're not lonely. In many ways the mind-share is just Cammie's way of coping (also no more nightmares). Her inability to stand alone is an issue that's been foreshadowed since the very beginning. I appreciate this direction. She's been trying to develop the G:L program to look exactly like the Union's Nirvana in a sense. But the space she refuses to provide anyone else is beggining to cause...problems, speaking of which:

KAZU. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All of the privacy he wants, all the things his subconscious has been burying? He can't do that on the cloud. All of his thoughts are everyone else's. But I'm obsessed with the fact he put on a robe in a dreamscape instead of like...actual clothes. Hilarious.

Val doesn't have much outside of Kazu, but what he gets is still cute.

Migas is gay. Sorry. He is.

Polity

Marin is a ❤️piece of garbage❤️ . Also, again, nothing in G:L has good security like this is sad. Also also, are the other Chase's not on the G:L network anymore? Also also also, these new Holons still have no reason to exist. I still don't know what the point of them is. Also also also also, does anyone know Leon is dead yet?

Miranda is great in this episode. She's such a realist it hurts. It's not necessarily a mindset bred from logicality either. Everything she does: the promotion within her ranks (can she really, just do that???), the passionless sex with Jodie, all of it is just her taking a deeply cynical control over her reality in order to keep moving forward. Just because she's not angry at Chase anymore doesn't mean she's over him. He's everywhere. She literally can't escape him. And ironically enough, Chase wanted Miranda to be his escape. She's still the first he went to with new info. Still where he goes when he can't be alone. They both want to move on, and they want to do so separately, but they can't. At the very least, they don't know how. Boundaries!!

Union

Who is giving Brother Tate this information about the Mars thing??? I can't side with the Union, obviously. But their motives are as pure as they are...bad, and I think that's what I really like about them.

Also I'm still unendingly grateful that this faith has some merit to it.

The Proletariat

A TERRIBLE name. What does this have to do with Marxism? I mean in opposition to the Polity, I guess (I truly cannot stand capitalism Holcroft makes me SICK), but I don't see Sinclair's faction as the working class at all. He is destroying the two party system at least, as he should. Although, I don't know why exactly helping people escape the warzone is something neither party likes. Like what exactly is wrong with that in the eyes of Brother Tate or Marin?

Also, if not the Anvil, where is the base of operations? Is it just RTASA? I mean I'm fine with that, I guess.

Other

World building on TEN in this episode Las Vegas is so cool and terrible.

"I hear Australia still has trees" wow.

Sinclair's lil grappling hook thingie is so much fun.

The sex scene wasn't that bad -- or at least not offensively so -- and it's now all anyone is talking about and that angers me because the schadenfreude is drowning out actual discussion of the merit of this show as a show and not "what HBO did to it." Like I can both hate a corporation over a show and still have respect for the artists' direction. It doesn't have to be the same. If I don't like the direction on its most basic level (like the literal content rating) then the show doesn't have and never will have anything to offer me. Making such a fuss about cookies I want to be cake is beneficial to none and detrimental to everyone trying to actually engage with the thing. I'm generalizing here but it's the common sentiment I see reflected in G:L spaces and it's tired.

Final Ranking: 6 seggs scenes out of 7. Still nowhere near the enjoyment I got from Season 1, but I'm glad this show still exists. Let me say it again: I'm glad this show still exists.

[heyyitsjayy]

So since the Holons can feel things... Cammie felt her head being ripped off which is HORRIFYING. But also since the bodies can’t die from that type of damage we’re about to get into Animorphs-level of battle wounds knowing full well these pilots will feel EVERYTHING.