#genlock val

[vilnan]

fandom: dragon age

rating: mature. minors dni.

pairing: carver hawke/oc

word count: 616

A/N: i haven't written anything in a hot minute so apologies in advance!! i'm currently deep in bg3 hell, but i still ended up writing about carver and august, somehow. august is my grey warden oc whom carver gets to know during da2 when he's recruited to the wardens in the deep roads. this fic is pretty tame, but minors interacting will still get blocked!

i've written more about them here: i, ii, iii

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

There's a swordsman's callus on August's thumb. It catches on the skin of Carver's shoulder blade, when his palm glides from his lower back to his freckled shoulder. Fingers dig into the muscle, nails leaving half moons to Carver's light brown skin.

Carver's breath catches and he pushes further in with his hips, making August sigh breathlessly under him. 

His eyes are closed when Carver searches them with his own. His mousy brown hair is tousled adorably from how he's been gripping and pulling it with his hands. His eyelashes are dripping from tears and there's a pink scar on his cheek from genlock's sharp blade and Carver presses a gentle kiss to it.

He's so beautiful, Carver thinks. The most beautiful thing he has ever seen in his life. And maybe he is only 22 years old and a little stupid, but he likes to think that he has seen a lot of stuff by now.

August is a man who is still a boy, just like Carver himself, but fierce and loyal to his friends that he would take a sword to the heart for them a thousand times over. He's brave to a fault.

He is also the world's hugest pillock. Carver's very favourite one.

"Are you close?" Carver pants, and August nods without words.

Carver picks up pace, and it's not long before both of them have found satisfaction and they are lying on their backs on their joined bedrolls. There's a sweet sort of kiss that gets pressed on Carver's bicep, and Carver's heart clenches like a fist under his rib cage.

"You know, I never thought I would end up in bed with an Orlesian guy," Carver says almost conversationally after the sweat has cooled on their bodies and their heart rates have returned to normal. And then he immediately winces afterwards. Maker, he sometimes wishes that the time Bethany almost accidentally killed him with a rusty pitchfork back in Lothering would have worked. 

"And I never thought I would end up in bed with someone who has a cock the size of a horse, but here we are," he teases with a significant look to Carver's lower body, and Carver flushes deep and red.

August is doing the thing he does when he wants to be particularly annoying; adopting a thick exaggerated Orlesian accent that the nobles in Val Royeux use. It drives Carver up the wall, and he knows it.

"Maker, please stop, you bloody pillock," he whines. He's pretty sure August can tell how pleased he is by the comment, though, which makes it all the more embarrassing. Andraste's tits, Carver sometimes feels like it's August's lifework to tease him so mercilessly.

August laughs. It's a weirdly shrill sound that could belong to a teenage girl, and it makes Carver hide his grin on August's neck. He inhales August’s scent; he always smells so incredibly nice. Different from girls.

"It's true!" August says, delighted by Carver’s reaction. "And you definitely always get the Grey Wardens' incredible stamina part right."

Carver moans in agony while August's bony shoulders shake.

"Alright alright!" Carver says, but only slightly grumpy. August continues to giggle for a little while longer, before he quiets down.

Carver kind of wants to say something. I really like you (embarrassing). I could go for another round (even more embarrassing). I don't ever want to lose you (the most embarrassing thing he's thinking about right now).

In the end he says nothing, and August returns his silence in kind, though he presses a sweet sort of kiss to Carver’s furrowed brow.

Then they just sleep, and in the morning they will pretend to be nothing more than rivals turned friends again.

[sulky-valkyrie]

hi auntie val! i give you a prompt you can make angsty or sweet

“did i do good?” for tabris and timur!

Hullooo favorite fishie!

The last hurlock fell beneath Timur's mace with a disgusting squelchy crunch. He grimaced and wished for the thousandth time he had a proper sword, but pauper Grey Warden recruits had to make do with whatever they could get their hands on. Maybe one if these creatures might have something more serviceable? Or at least less messy. Kallian had somehow procurred blades of her own back at camp, but, being the bitch of a sister she always was, refused to tell him where.

Timur started nudging the corpses with a boot, hoping a better weapon would turn up. Kallian hissed somewhere behind him, and he spun around, ready for another fight, but it was only Alistair, bandaging a shallow cut on her arm.

"Stop wiggling and this would be tied already," he muttered, blushing furiously.

"Fuck you, I'd be done already if you weren't helping," she spat.

Making friends as always. Timur wasn't sure how to deal with the way Alistair looked at her, or if Kallian had even noticed. It wasn't at all like how Vaughan or his cronies had, but it reminded him of it all the same. To be a noticed elf in Denerim was never good, and Alistair couldn’t seem to stop noticing her. All of her, not just her backside either. In fact, he stared at her hands most often, presumably because looking at her face would be too obvious. He was practically mesmerized, and more than once, Timur had seen him reach to touch her arm, almost wonderingly, then stop himself. A good thing too, because killing him would cause far more problems than it might solve. He hoped with the Wardens it would be different, but it worried him all the same. Especially with an entire army of shem surrounding them. Helping hide bodies for his sister had not been a favored pastime and he preferred not to repeat it.

"You plannin' on using that, mate?"

Timur blinked in surprise. Daveth was crouched in front of him, pulling a rusty sword out of the dead hurlock's hand. "I - maybe?" He wiggled his mace in exasperation. "Anything is probably better than this."

"Right, right." Daveth bobbed his head in agreement. "Your sister - she's your sister, right? - she found some nice weapons, you ask her? Also, she seeing anyone? I'd ask myself but I like my balls still attached."

He snorted. "Yes, yes, and no." He took the offered sword and swung it a few times. The balance wasn’t bad, and even though it looked like garbage, it wasn't pitted or chipped. "But I don't recommend, uh, pursuing that. You're from Denerim, right?"

"I'm from everywhere," Daveth snickered.

Timur cocked his head toward Kallian. "She's why they tell humans not to go to the alienage at night." He paused. "Well, the men."

"Seems to like that one okay." Daveth said as he pointed. Sure enough, Kallian was actually laughing, a sound Timur hadn't heard since the morning of the wedding, and punching Alistair in the arm. Before Timur could figure out what to do about that, the only actual Grey Warden among them tilted his head like a dog scenting the air.

"More coming," he said brusquely. Once darkspawn were involved, it was the only time Alistair actually seemed serious or capable. He slung his shield off his back and motioned them to follow.

Timur fell in next to Kallian behind Alistair as Jory moved up beside him. Daveth pulled out a bow and brought up the rear, muttering what sounded like part of Chant of Light.

When they crested the hill, Alistair and Jory charged forward. Alistiar's shield smashed into genlock's face as Jory took another one's head clean off. Timur hesitated, telling himself that he was just surveying the battlefield, but when Kallian surged past him, he was dragged along on her wake.

They'd always fought together well, no doubt due to learning from their mother together, and while fighting darkspawn was more difficult than fighting humans, their teamwork was just as effective. If she feinted left, he followed through in the same direction, and if he went high, she went low. They never needed to talk about it either. They were a single force, a single mind, and it had given them the upper hand in most all of their scraps in the alienage.

Most of the time, he amended to himself. A snarl of pain and anger disrupted his thoughts. An arrow was in Kallian's arm, and she was pissed.

Oh, shit. Timur lunged forward, pushing the hurlock in front of him out of the way and taking a glancing blow on the shoulder, then grabbed her injured elbow with a muttered, "Sorry." She almost bit him as he dragged her backwards, so he pinched her ear like their mother used to. That did it, and the momentary distraction was enough to stave off one of her . . . well, their mother called them fits. She'd been getting better at controlling them, hadn't had one in months, maybe years, but Timur had seen the inside of the arl's estate. That dam had broken, and things were happening faster than she could rebuild it.

She nodded her gratitude as the rage faded from her face, then took up a position behind the other warriors instead of running headlong into the darkspawn like she'd been intending. Daveth took down the hurlock who shot her with an arrow of his own, and Alistair did something that made the genlock with a staff fall to its knees.

They rushed forward as a group and overwhelmed the rest of them in short order. Timur focused on keeping Kallian's injured side covered, hacking at anything that came close, until suddenly, he swung at thin air. He looked around, worried that the fight had moved on without him, but no: there simply weren't any left.

Kallian broke the arrow off with a hiss and threw it at the darkspawn corpse at her feet, and was about to force the head through herself before Daveth offered to help. She looked like she was about to spit at him, but practicality won out over pride, so she grimaced and offered her arm to him. Timur watched him work it out carefully, listening to the sounds of Jory and Alistair searching the corpses for anything useful. He should be helping, but he needed to be sure Kallian was okay first.

"That was well done," Alistair said quietly behind him.

He spun around. "I did good?"

Alistair nodded toward Kallian. "Stopping her. That mage would've - anyway, well done. The treaties should be just ahead." He pointed at a chest nestled by a vine-covered broken down wall. "In fact, that should be them. Could you check? I'll keep an eye on your sister."

Timur frowned, but didn't argue. If nothing else, Alistair would keep Daveth from doing something that might get someone gutted. He picked his way across the ruins, but as he neared it, it was obvious the chest was as damaged as the fortress surrounding it. Maybe it was buried underneath?

Twenty minutes of investigation later, he gave up, hauled himself back to his feet, and stretched his back with a sigh. Alistair and Kallian were sitting together as he bandaged her again, and Daveth was still breathing, so there really wasn't a rush to report back that his search had been fruitless. It's almost peaceful out here if you ignore all the darkspawn.

"Well, well, well, what have we here?"

[bloodraven55]

WAKE UP EVERYONE NEW GEN:LOCK TRAILER JUST DROPPED!!!

[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

[think-genderfluid]

Genderfluid in Media

Okay I'm honestly ecstatic that this happened. I know several people are mad or feel it wasn't something that's needed. But listen.

People need this. It's a thing. People aren't always cis gender and it's okay to be either way. You can feel male, female, both, neither, or some mixture at any moment in time.

With Roosterteeth making Val/entina cannonly genderfluid, they set a huge mark on history. For people to understand each other and THEMSELVES we need to be understanding and let the media give those people who feel like this a role model and someone to look up to.

What's the harm to you??? If you honestly habe a problem with it then the problem is you.

Val/entina is valid.

Also side note... Val's color pallet is the GENDERFLUID FLAG I'M SO HAPPY I SAW THIS

[autisticblueteam]

[necronymie]

them,

[werewolf-cuddles]

Problems with gen:LOCK Season 2:

Retcons that blatantly contradict the first season and the tie-in comic.

The animation quality has taken a massive downgrade. Not quite early RWBY levels of janktacular, but definitely up there.

A drastic tonal shift from lighthearted fun with occasional serious moments to overly bleak and depressing

Too much half-baked political drama, not enough mech action

Incredibly awkward sex scenes that nobody asked for or wanted

Characters being written horribly out of character compared to how they were written previously

Main characters being unceremoniously killed off for shock value

Bury your gays (Not Val though... Yet)

They couldn’t be arsed to relicense Battle Tapes and replaced it with some generic crap

Basically, they HBO’d the fuck out of it. And that’s why Season 2 of gen:LOCK Is garbage and should be treated as entirely non-canon.

This is what happens when you rip creative control of a series away from the people who originally made it. You rob it of it’s soul and turn it into something hideous and unrecognizable.

[gigawatt-conduit]

The irony about genlock 2 is that it kinda ultimately loops back around to Gray doing it to himself

If he hadn’t decided to do that shit he did (allegedly and all that), he could’ve had full creative control and a hot series on HBO max. whatever you say about the man it’s clear that he knew what he wanted that show to be, what themes he wanted to pursue, etc

but instead he tried to speedrun through the success that Monty got and now he’s gotta sit back as his baby gets essentially gutted to become a less charming, way grosser copy of itself

[genderfluid-focus]

Shout out to the canon genderfluid representation in gen:LOCK!

[thesouppond]

[ Convenience Store Run ]

I've been doing some doodles and smaller pieces while my thesis and uni work keeps me from working on RL. Here's me playing with screen tones and shading :3

[cockbiteproductions]

gen:LOCK season 2

[nitw]

genlock is relevant once again so im just gonna put this out there: kazu finding peace with the queer label with a little help from val because any other label feels too specific and encapsulating for him but he still know he’s queer

[bloodraven55]

[your-dar-ling]

Gen:Lock 2.7 Re(cap/view)

If you haven't seen my other 6 reviews literally click #darglreview in the tags and read them all because I said ALL this, review done.

I just love when my faith in a narrative is rewarded.

Some favorite lines:

"[*Gen:Lock has invaded the building*] Oh. I know those guys. Back to work." - Henry Wu

"Don't let your hubris confuse *our* end with *the* end." - Dr. Jha (girl pick up that gun)

"*Sees a man get chopped in half* Oh man well now I feel really bad." - Migas

"I've had this scar for a long time, I'm just embracing it now." - Julian Chase

The entire Val/Kazu scene

Final Ranking: 8/10

Okay I did not predict the base literally burrowing underground that sounds like incomprehensible damage to the Earth but hey everyone's dying anyway who cares.

[thesassiestcolor]

Alright alright alright GL EP 4??? Not terrible. I got 10 minutes left so who knows but. Even had a sex scene and it wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen. I don't know about Necessary but not as bad as the first try

EDIT: AYO NEVERMIND MY FAULT FOR NOT STICKING IT TO THE END FUCK HBO