seconds chances or something poetic like that

MEDIA ANALYSIS: THE PARALLELS BETWEEN GENERATION LOSS (2023) AND LITTLE NIGHTMARES (2017, 2021).

Little Nightmares is a two-game series that follows the journeys of two young children named Mono and Six. As the first game centered entirely around Six, we didn’t get introduced to Mono until the second game, in which he is now the playable character, whereas Six is an AI companion that serves to assist him throughout their journey. Generation Loss is a horror comedy created by a Twitch streamer known as Ranboo, who used their livestreaming platform of their choice to create an interactive horror experience, in which the audience could either click on their screens or vote in the chat to decide Ranboo’s next actions, right down to his fate. Though Ranboo makes many new friends along his confusing journey in the series, none of them seem to stick around for very long, many of them being killed by Showfall Media, the corporate villain in his story. However, one friend did survive all three episodes, despite being cast as a different character by Showfall each time. This friend is Charlie Slimecicle, who plays a spirit haunting a cabin in the first episode, an unfortunate victim of a botched surgery in the second, and his normal self in the finale. Due to the nature of Showfall wiping their victims’ memories, Charlie is not aware that he has been recast for every show that the company runs, and only remembers bits of his past when certain things are shown to him in the third episode. However, Ranboo recognises Charlie immediately upon seeing him in episode three, heavily implying that they were friends. Ranboo stops Charlie from livestreaming and breaks him from Showfall’s control, thus pulling him out of the technology that he had been sucked into; much like how all of the adults in Little Nightmares II were practically glued to their televisions until the broadcasts destroyed them entirely.

Both of these series focus on technology and its dangers, as well as showing the negative effects it can have on people. While this is a great social commentary, one that is honestly worth its own essay, there are also parallels to be drawn between the characters of both franchises. In my eyes, Ranboo can be compared to Six, whereas Charlie can be compared to Mono. To understand why these comparisons make sense, we have to backtrack to the original Little Nightmares game.

In Little Nightmares, we play as a young girl named Six, who is trapped on a ship called “The Maw”. As the player, our goal is to help Six escape the ship as fast as she can; however, this proves difficult sometimes, as there are moments when Six can’t go very fast. This is due to her extreme hunger pains, the first of which is noticed by a boy in a cafeteria who throws her a piece of bread to eat as she begins to keel over from the pain. The things that she eats only get worse, ranging from raw meat left in a trap for her, to a rat, to a woman whose powers she was able to absorb, all the way down to eating a small child who has been turned into a gnome – or, a Nome, as they are called in the game. Six’s eating habits and willingness to kill makes it obvious that she is willing to do ANYTHING to get off of this ship and survive, much like how Ranboo regretfully performed surgery on Charlie in episode two because of how badly he wanted to find the key to his escape. Just from this comparison alone, we can already see that these characters are alike, at least in some way: Both are willing to do whatever it takes to survive, even if it means killing or causing immense suffering. Another similarity between the two lies in their main character status, as Six appears in both Little Nightmares games, whereas Mono is only introduced in the second. This tells us that Six is an important part of the story, and most likely the one that we should be rooting for; the same can be said for Ranboo, who is the only person we see for a while after he wakes up in Charlie’s (or, if we are to use his demon name, G’lop’s) cabin. Both characters are introduced alone, waking up in unfamiliar settings, and are forced to navigate their way out while facing enemies along the way, all while doing whatever they must do to escape.

So, we’ve drawn a pretty clear tie between Six and Ranboo, but what about Mono and Charlie? This is actually a great question, as the very first episode begins to draw parallels between the two already, despite the fact that Charlie is a demon who is meant to be haunting Ranboo. For an evil spirit, he does have a friendly side. However, due to his unsettling nature, Ranboo is obviously a bit apprehensive towards him at first, just as Six was afraid of Mono when he used an axe to break down her door. However, a few scenes later, Six is in the attic, struggling to pull a ladder down from the ceiling, and quietly beckons Mono over to help her, showing that she is slowly learning to trust. Ranboo does the same: They take a while to begin to trust people around them, especially G’Lop, a demon who survives off of a diet of slime and has a suit drenched in the green goop. Despite his off-putting nature, though, Ranboo eventually grows more comfortable with G’Lop, although their final interaction does end in a battle; however, even this can be connected to Little Nightmares, as the second game’s ending requires you, Mono, to fight off a giant, evil, warped version of your best friend, Six.

The second episode doesn’t have any real comparisons to draw between the franchises, so we can move on to episode three, which is possibly the MOST Little Nightmares -coded episode of the series. Upon finding out that the warehouse he was trapped in for the entirety of episode two was actually an abandoned mall, Ranboo immediately searches for other signs of life, eventually finding Charlie streaming from his computer at an empty counter in the food court. When Ranboo yells at Charlie, nothing happens. Even walking in front of him does nothing. It isn’t until Ranboo pulls Charlie’s headphones off that the other man begins to understand where he is and why his friend is so concerned. This, again, can be used as a comparison to the television sets in Little Nightmares II, in which the adults are SO attached to their TVs, that they will literally kill anyone who shuts off the broadcast, as it seemingly snaps them out of their spell once they’ve already become mindless zombies.

Upon taking Charlie’s headphones off and briefly explaining the gravity of the situation at hand, the pair decide to run for an exit, only to be chased down by security guards and forced to lock themselves in an abandoned supply shop. While looking around, Ranboo grabs a small knife and places it into a bag that he finds on the floor. The two look for another exit, but are chased again, this time into a room where we see Hetch, a hacker who had been attempting to assist Ranboo, bleeding out. He explains to the pair that Showfall wiped their memories so that they would remember nothing besides being part of the show, which sends Charlie into a crisis. As they leave, Ranboo appears angry, while Charlie desperately follows behind him and begs for answers. A security guard directly approaches Ranboo as they walk, and with no hesitation, he grabs the knife from his bag and stabs the guard, who has wires leaking out of him instead of blood. After this happens, Charlie looks over and notices the set from the episode one cabin, which is the place that he believed himself to have grown up in. Distraught by realising that none of his childhood memories were real, he is easily distracted, and doesn’t notice a seven-foot-tall monster made out of wires and a TV head, who has creeped around the corner of the set and is now ready to attack him. Charlie has no time to run, and is presumably killed by the monster as Ranboo watches, his last words being, “The button, Ranboo!”, referring to a button in the distance that is allegedly supposed to set down all of the mall’s security. Ranboo runs to press the button, and though it does, in fact, work, he is now entirely alone.

In a stream after the finale premiered, Ranboo stated that there was a limited amount of time for their character to escape the mall, and by stopping to save Charlie, he lost that time, and never would have been able to escape. However, it is important to note that there is no universe in which Charlie could have been saved. Had Ranboo left him at the food court, he would have died in the mall. In the ending we saw, he was ripped apart by the wire monster: There was NEVER any way for Ranboo to save Charlie, and his lack of knowledge about this fact makes the show’s ending even sadder, as we see Ranboo get killed while knowing that he could have escaped if he had simply stayed alone. Even more unfortunately, we know that, since Charlie has died many times, Showfall is able to bring people back from the dead, meaning that Ranboo’s death may have only been a temporary sign of relief for the tortured youth. The point of Showfall having the power of resurrection is incredibly important to mention, as it fuels one of the main theories for this series AND the truth of the Little Nightmares games:

It’s all a time loop.

If Showfall were to bring Ranboo back to life after his execution and send him back to the cabin, he would meet G’Lop, or Demon Charlie, once more. This is similar to the time loop ending of Little Nightmares II: As the building that Mono and Six are in begins to collapse, the two run across an unstable bridge towards an exit. Six makes it there first, and offers her hand to Mono, who jumps and grabs on, obviously expecting her to pull him up. However, there’s a brief pause in this moment, one in which you can see Six looking into Mono’s eyes, then pulling her hand back in fear, thereby releasing him into the endless abyss of the signal tower, where he is trapped for years until he becomes the Thin Man, the game’s primary antagonist. The Thin Man is released from a television set when Mono goes into a TV and finds a long hallway with a mysterious door at the end; upon opening it, the man is able to escape and kidnap Six. However, this time loop would be impossible if Six had simply pulled Mono up onto the ledge with her; though it is possible that she looked into his eyes and saw the face of the man who tortured her just recently, and dropped him out of either fear or anger. Since Six will always feel this way, Mono will always be dropped, and he will always become the Thin Man at the end of the hallway.

So, how could this apply to Generation Loss? Well, if Showfall were to bring a resurrected Ranboo to G’lop’s cabin, he would once again meet the villain whom he was certain was going to kill him. What if Charlie became this villain, not because Showfall wanted him to, but because he was angry at Ranboo for simply standing back in shock as he was violently murdered by the Wire Monster? If the time loop theory is true for Generation Loss, what if Charlie wasn’t reset after his death in episode three, but rather after episode one, in which he still holds all of his memories from episode three? Did he become a mocking villain just to spite Ranboo for not saving him? Or is Showfall always in control of its cast members, just as the Signal Tower was always in control of the residents in Little Nightmares II?

sory i thought about genloss ranboo too hard :(