being neg about gen loss

generation loss crit blog

run by mod i (she/her)

Like Marble Hornets CHANGED internet/analog horror and shaped lots of Creepypasta myths, while also inspiring other Slenderverse series. There is a reason why it is considered as the part of the Big Three/Five of Slenderverse, because it kick started literally everything analog horror, Creepypasta mythos and Slenderverse is built themselves upon. It is something that even if you never watched it, you've heard it. I'm sorry but what exactly Generation Loss added to the horror/ARG/comedy community?

Fuck, even Tribe Twelve, which it's name and creator is avoided in the community for very valid reasons, added something and had an idea beyond "let me put famous people and make horror out of it. And there is an evil, controlling cooperation somewhere. But it's funny." Operator, Masky, Hoodie, Alex, Observer, Rake and HABIT are all recognizable and iconic in their own way, as well as Tim, Jay, Brian, Noah, Firebrand and Vinny. They were more than just "let me put famous people on my project". I've seen people say Adam, Noah's actor and the creator of T12, is a bad actor but compared to The Hero/Ranboo, you can see that he is at least trying to act something out. As Noah, as Firebrand, as Prebrand and as future/loop Noah. Firebrand and Observer, despite not having any speaking role, show more personality than The Hero. Both Prebrand and Rendezvous Noah showed in only one episode, but they showed more personality than hours of time we watched The Hero! Or most of the characters, really!

Fucking he'll, Milo's damn journal, annoying as it was, showed more personality than The Hero! Ranboo please explain to us how you are outdone by a DAMN JOURNAL?!

i recommend watching the original scene as it is very well written!! i havent seen saw 6 and even i understood most of it :3

something that really bothers me about genloss [that u may have heard a few times already] is just how. on-the-nose and surface level all the references were?

for example, the bit where ranboo is cutting open charlie. cool conceptually! but awfully executed; it was just a direct reference to saw, toilet and all. and it wasnt even plot relevant, except for the slime = blood thing [which is like 6 seconds of a ~10 minute scene]. all ranboo got from it was a piece from mousetrap, which DID come up later, but that was also filler.

its the same problem i have with the shotgun carousel [which is taken from saw 6], if ranboo really wanted to be creative and make his own unique show, he shouldve made up his own saw trap. i genuinely wouldve liked episode 2 if they did! even if it was bad its still better than directly taking one out of saw and inserting yourself and your friends into it. its just so boring and unimaginative yk? and the worst part of the whole scene is that in the original, the trap is relevant to the main character and is commenting on cruel healthcare policies in the US: the main character set up a policy at his company that would eliminate 2 thirds of people who applied for insurance, so he has to kill 4 out of 6 of his coworkers in the trap. i find it infuriating that ranboo took the trap and even some of the cinematography from the original scene but just completely removed any depth it had and turning it into a "comedy", and remaining oblivious to the message the movie was trying to portray.

new paragraph cuz the last one is long. ranboo just doesnt bother to analyse the media he references and just takes the most surface level ideas and puts them in his weird frankenstein saw trap love letter. i genuinely wouldve respected them more if they were inspired by the analogies created by the traps and how they relate to characters and carrying that same idea into his own characters to give them depth, but he just doesnt bother!! and its so fucking annoying to see!!

and its not like executing references well is all that difficult?? the key thing that makes a reference good is that its irrelevant to the story and its out of the way [imo], like something that goes unmentioned in the background. ranboo couldve done something like putting shots from saw movies in picture frames in the cabin or smthn. still not great, but its less egregious. but naaaahhh lets just rip an entire scene from one of the most famous horror movie franchises and inject repetitive improv into it, thatll be entertaining for half an hour!!

the main problem that arises when referencing media in the way ranboo does is that instead of thinking about how awful the characters must feel, im thinking about saw. i havent even seen saw, and i was thinking about saw. how do you even do that. if he had been creative and wrote his own trap, id be empathising first and thinking about saw second, because its more subtle, and not just a blaring alarm in your face telling you hey did you know that ranboo likes saw. did you know that. now you do!!

thing is its not even the only thing hes referencing, apparently the 1st episode was based on a horror movie called "the cabin in the woods", which is about teenagers who go to a cabin and are made to live out horror clichés, and tbh i wouldnt be surprised if that was ranboos main aim for gen 1; to insert himself and their friends into their fav horror tropes

btw just to make sure i wasnt making up stuff to get mad at i checked how long the carousel scene lasted, and from when ranboo enters the trap room to when he leaves is around 42 minutes. how they thought this was entertaining and worth the audiences time is beyond me

tldr; genloss is fundamentally derivative and ranboo doesnt understand characterisation, referencing or pacing. surpriseeee

take a shot every time i said "saw" and "reference" and you'll only be a fraction as wasted compared to if you took a shot whenever ranboo wastes the audiences time /j

It feels like little of importance was happening for 65% of the runtime, the acting is terrible, the pacing is bad, and it’s just. It’s not even remotely good until the last like 45 minutes of the cut. I just could not bring myself to care, it felt like a constant barrage of “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.” Over and over. It wasn’t scary at any point, and I still, even after managing to just BARELY sit through the entire thing, don’t understand how so much money and effort went into this if this was the end product. I was not familiar with any of these streamers besides Jerma and Vinny Vinesauce, which the Founder’s Cut does woefully little with, so I had absolutely no connection to any of the characters. If there was some effort made to actually get me invested in who the characters are maybe I would have felt more positively towards it but it feels like I’m supposed to go “HOLY SHIT A STREAMER I LIKE OH MY GOD”, which might have worked if I was at all into ANY of the people here. It felt like there were no stakes and nobody was taking anything seriously until the last “act” or whatever when they’re running around the mall. I see what it’s going for, I can read into the metaphor about the dehumanizing nature of producing content for an audience and stuff, but just wow. The worst part is that I was just so bored the entire time. It feels like a “you had to be there” kind of thing, and since I wasn’t there, none of it appealed to me in any way.

I don’t know, this clearly isn’t a piece of media made for me but I spent the entire time I was watching TRYING to like it and it just was not it. Ever. At any point. The ending was okay I guess, I like it conceptually, but having Hetch (I think that’s his name, I don’t really recall and I’m not scrolling through the cut to check rn) trying to be a glorified game show host over the only bit of the end I kinda vaguely enjoyed kind of ruined it for me a little bit. Idk. Having Ranboo say “thank you” as his head was turned into a mid at best blood effect was the only bit that made me feel much of anything besides annoyance or boredom. I like the whole concept, but pretty much every part of the execution was horrifically botched, I feel like I shouldn’t have to like the people involved already to be invested in even one of the characters. Maybe the streams were better but I just don’t have any desire to watch them.

Maybe I’m being too mean here but yeah, I basically forced myself through 2 and a half hours of some of the most amateurish “horror” content I’ve ever seen and it felt like I got very little out of the entire viewing experience besides 45 minutes of content that got dangerously close to being okay at best.