#ranboo meta
Text
OK fuck it I'll post it
C!Ranboo and the Tragedy of Belief
Note that I had an hour to write this so it may not be very cohesive.
Full thing under the readmore but tldr: c!ranboo is intwined so closely with the concept of faith and hope that it is impossible in dsmp lore to speak about one without speaking about the other.
Everything is obviously /rp, this is about the CHARACTER on the DSMP
Full disclosure this will be very poorly structured if at all
Ranboo's character is a walking talking example of a slave to faith. He represents hope (and the loss thereof) on the dsmp first and foremost and I think that's why he's such a hard hitting character
Now I do not claim to be a spectacular cranboo understander but I've had this idea boiling in my brain for a while and now I will share it.
We see it from the MOMENT he joins, seeking sanctuary from dream in a literal place of faith, but that exchange was granted mostly comedic so I should get down to brass tacks
Ranboo's centrism, his ideals of people not sides, everything he loves and everything he has, it is all based on faith. Literally all of his actions are based off of blind hope. A central point to his character is trust- in himself, in others, in the world. He admits to robbing George's house (after Tommy took all the blame in court mind you) because he believes it will help, because he has faith that tommy is not selfish, because tommy has given him reason to believe it. He goes along with the butcher army because he believes that tubbo is doing the right thing. He escapes doomsday because techno believes that it wasn't his fault. The panic room, and events within it, are based entirely on belief
We know that the dream voice is not actually dream himself, but rather ranboo's psyche taking his form as a stock "bad person", as someone who ranboo wholeheartedly believes to be The Villain. Trust is a HUGE theme in their conversation, it even all boils down to ranboo realizing he cannot place his endless faith into himself, but he KEEPS HOPING.
Despite everything, despite the horrors and the conflicts and the server falling apart, ranboo NEVER loses hope. He seems hopeless at times, but then he's faithful again- because that's how he survives. He can't believe in himself, so he finds people that he can have faith in instead, and those people can believe in him when he cannot. He survives off of faith, he lives and breathes belief.
And those people who he chooses to believe in... Unless they super duper fuck up, his faith in them is UNSHAKEN.
He puts his faith in tubbo in New L'Manburg and watches as tubbo exiles the man who took the blame for ranboo in a COURT OF LAW. sure, he visits tommy in exile, he KNOWS that was the wrong decision, but he unshakably believes that tubbo did what he thought was best. almost instantaneously afterwards, that faith leads him to assist in detaining philza and hunting technoblade, and even when that ends up biting them all in the ass, does he stop believing in tubbo after doomsday?? NO!
He MARRIES tubbo, someone as transient and listless as tubbo, and he puts his faith in his husband and in their child and in snowchester, even as tubbo compulsively moves to the next project and the next, even as tubbo drowns himself in his work
Emeraldduo put faith in him, allow him to live with them, and he puts his faith in them and in the syndicate and in that mission to prevent governments from rising again, even as he's MARRIED TO THE PRESIDENT. he goes with them to snowchester, guards tubbo's secrets, does everything he can to keep these people he believes in from fighting each other.
Even his refusal to choose sides is a blind, foolish hope - A vain faith in the goodness of his fellow players, that they will all realize that sides are useless, that it should be all of them against dream. And this faith gets spat on and trampled again and again, over and over, and still this noodle-spined coward continues to hope. He puts stock in the goodness of his fellow player even when that faith is betrayed CONSTANTLY
He lets Sam write in his book in big bold letters, "TOMMY'S DEATH IS SAM'S FAULT", and we know he doesn't believe it but he HAS to. He has to believe it to keep going, and keep going he will, because he has a husband and a child to come home to at night and a mansion for them being built that he blindly hopes tubbo will move into, even knowing how tubbo hates to stay in one place
They make the cookie outpost. Tubbo tells him about the green festival and tells him he doesn't trust Quackity. Tubbo sells the cookie outpost. Tubbo then tells him that he now trusts Quackity. Ranboo thought of that fort as something special that he and tubbo made together! Tubbo offhandedly signing it away to someone he told ranboo NOT TO TRUST should be a MASSIVE breach of that faith but does he stop trusting him? No! That's his husband! Of course he trusts tubbo.
Even when Wilbur came around, Wilbur who originally hated ranboo for not taking sides on anything, he decided he'd trust him. Against the history of everyone he cares for, he puts his faith in Wilbur because SOMEONE has to be there when he gets better. SOMEONE has to vouch for his improvement. SOMEONE has to believe in Wilbur when he can't believe in himself.
Someone has to believe in ranboo when he can't believe in himself.
Against the trust he put in Sam, against the words Sam wrote IN HIS BOOK, he's put in jail for conspiring with dream. Put in there because Sam needs leverage against dream. Sam who he trusted. Sam who trusted him. And when the breakout happens, and the leverage DOESN'T WORK, does he stop hoping?
No.
Ranboo hopes to his last breath. He is full of hope as he falls to the ground, as he presses Michael's photo into Technoblade's hand. He trusts technoblade to find his son. He trusts technoblade to care for his family. He dies hoping. He dies faithful.
And on that grass block in the middle of that ocean, he is still hoping. Cowering and despairing but still believing. He has faith that the people he loves will come for him. He has faith that Mexican dream will tell his son how much he loves him. He sits on that grass block and hopes.
He writes in his book, and he hopes.
This turned out a lot more emotional than I intended ngl but those r my thoughts on the matter. Cranboo is all about faith and belief even after it lets him down time after time, and he keeps hoping because it's all he can do. That's it :P
73 notes
·
View notes
Text
do you ever think about how wild it is that cranboo met ctubbo after so much terrible shit had already happened to him. how he missed such crucial context that other people in tubbo's live had!! like. he shows up in this country that's been very recently blown to bits by some dead guy everyone refuses to talk about, and the new president is literally just some kid covered in bandages + wearing this suit that looks ridiculously big on him, and ranboo is probably super caught off-guard at first but pretty quickly he gets the idea: this kid's got a funny sense of humor, and he's been horribly messed up by whatever Bad Thing happened here, and sometimes ranboo blinks and the president's eyes have glazed over and he's shouting, commanding this measly broken country with a presence you never thought could exude from such an unimposing little guy. sometimes tubbo gets angry, and yeah ranboo thinks that looks unnerving on him, but it's nowhere near how jarring it probably is for everyone else who remembers the OLD tubbo, tub-in-a-box tubbo, lika-da-bee tubbo, silly fun happy tubbo. he never knew the tubbo before the scars. to ranboo this is, like. just how tubbo is.
#ranboo#tubbo#can you tell nlm-beeduo HAUNTS me#it's also important to note that in cranboo's mind all of this is interspersed with incredible gayness directed at ctubbo btw#obv. cbeeduo in gay love etc etc#bee duo#dsmp#lmanberg#meta#romeoposting
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
tommy's making a fair point about the mechanics of minecraft in relation to the lore actually. it's true that in the dsmp's current stage everyone kinda has the same power level. they all have netherite armor and the best enchanted weapons and all that because the traditional way of playing minecraft includes getting geared up to protect yourself from threats. but this has the unintended consequence of making the combat much less interesting during big story moments
when eret betrayed l'manburg in the war it was more impactful because l'manburg was set up as the underdogs by virtue of having less resources and protection than the dream team. there was a clear power difference visible in the way that fundy, tubbo, tommy, and wilbur had cobbled together pieces of armor and the dream team was decked out in full enchanted netherite. in the earlier days of the smp the lack of armor contributed to the weight of the conflict
the l'manburg era was pretty good at controlling this sort of thing because the no armour rule worked both within the context of the lore and on a meta level
it feels like every method of fighting has been explored a especially with the usage of things like end crystals, withers, tnt, and wolves. and these days even those aren't enough to really damage someone unless you have a way of stripping them of their armor
ranboo's death was a great demonstration of this problem, where in order to actually kill him they had to write a reason for him to take off his armor. i'm not saying that stream was disappointing but ranboo's death specifically felt a little anticlimactic to me and it's not really anyone's fault either. that's just how it works sometimes when youre using a game for something other than its initial purpose
on the other end of this i literally can't count the amount of times schlatt had to ask tommy to kill a skeleton or a creeper for him because he failed to account for his complete lack of armor outside of a character perspective
idk. it's interesting how the mechanics of a game like minecraft have to be put into consideration for when you're crafting a narrative in that form. many things to think about in smp roleplay
#dream smp#dsmp#mcyt#meta#tommyinnit#ranboo#jschlatt#fundy#tubbo#wilbur soot#dreamwastaken#georgenotfound#sapnap#eret#the pig squeals#analysis#long post
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
genuinely kill the idea that c!techno isn't emotional or doesn't understand other people's emotions because he is and he does. his interactions with people, when he's not attempting to keep himself safe, when he's allowed to be open, are always full of understanding.
he knew that c!ranboo needed a place where they were accepted and felt feel from coercion and literally constructed an entire manifesto around giving them that. his apology to c!tubbo was exactly what tubbo needed to hear, that he is and was worth saving. c!phil, who struggles with expressing his emotions, gets grand and over the top gestures of friendship and techno's desire to protect him. he made certain that at all times, c!niki felt heard.
techno understood.
#loyal does meta#hold on i'm crying again#technoblade#ranboo#philza#tubbo#niki nihachu#dream smp#dsmp analysis
671 notes
·
View notes
Text
the problem with talking about ghostbur's relation to wilbur is that going too far in Either direction muddles the waters.
people like to think of ghostbur as an entirely separate entity from wilbur, where nothing about him informs wilbur as a character. this often comes packed with dehumanization, either of Wilbur (with ghostbur being the Good version of wilbur while wilbur is the bad) or of Ghostbur (why does it matter how anybody treats ghostbur when he isn't Really wilbur).
and it's strange and uncomfortable ! because ghostbur so clearly gives us an insight on wilbur as a person. we learn so much About wilbur Through ghostbur. it's just ! absurd to use one to lessen the other when they're so clearly different views of the same Whole.
but at the same time, I Remember ghostbur begging for personhood. I Remember ghostbur begging to have his feelings taken seriously, to be seen as more than just a joke. I remember ghostbur building tommy a home in logstedsire and mourning when it was lost. I remember him mourning new l'manberg. I remember him wanting to bring wilbur back. I remember how tommy mourned him. built him a grave a Grieved him when nobody else did because they didn't think they had to. why would they, when wilbur was right there in front of them? I remember, I Remember.
and the thing About ghostbur is that I Do think that he is a reflection of wilbur. it's ridiculous to try to say that one doesn't inform us of the other.
but I think about how much of his character is wrapped around this desperate want for Personhood. trying to figure out who he is, to carve a place for himself as the memory of someone who was already gone and yet a fully formed being perfectly capable of feeling emotion.
and I think that, too, is a reflection on wilbur.
ghostbur didn't want to be wilbur because Wilbur didn't want to be wilbur anymore. but wilbur didn't know What to be either. trying to break out of the mold he made for himself and figure out what it means now to live as a Person with agency and feelings that matter.
wilbur didn't kill himself because it was an inevitable part of his story as the villain, he did it because he was sad. learning how to be someone who can admit that was Hard.
he'd cried as the president of l'manberg over the pressure of being responsible for everyone, of not being able to live up to what he thought he had to be. and we learned that from ghostbur.
and like ! it's exactly Because of all of this that I can't find it in me to deny ghostbur his personhood. to look at someone who once begged people to realize that he has feelings that Matter, that the things that happen to him Matter because he has agency, because he's a person, and to say No.
I had a theory, once, that the thing that made ranboo Ranboo is that he was half dead. there was the enderwalk that remembered everything, and there was ranboo who lived as a separate antonymous person. ranboo is, in a way, a reflection of this other person, and yet he's not Lesser as a person either. ranboo being formed around a smaller pool of memories means that he grows Differently from this enderwalk version of himself. his personality shifts, the choices he makes are different, even if fundamentally the building blocks are shared.
I had a theory, then, that the whole point of ranboo dying was to have this enderwalk and our ranboo Fuse. not into the whole person that ranboo was split from, but into the New person that they make together.
and that's how I like to conceptualize wilbur and ghostbur. not two unrelated entities and yet both People in their own right.
moreover, that's exactly what I would've liked for them as well.
#dream smp#wilbur soot#ghostbur#ranboo#enderwalk#suicide mention#meta#ranboo stans gonna be confused until the end here
119 notes
·
View notes
Text
Okay prompted by some conversations I’ve been having, but the comment has been made that it’s an unrealistic promise to have been made by a fandom, that if you google your name you won’t find anything you dislike or are uncomfortable with, and boy, does that feel more and more true.
Because like, setting boundaries for your specific circles where you are— twitch chat, your fan art tag, your instagram mentions, your discord— that’s absolutely fair and I support that. That’s healthy. Someone saying “if you comment on my tits I will not be responding and you won’t be welcome at my parties again”, that’s just healthy adult communication. Shutting down sexual comments, or saying you won’t be participating in talk about certain hot-button topics, or saying you won’t be speculating about disability or sexuality or mental health or gender— those are just good moderation techniques of a space.
But like, outside of those spaces that you are sort of in charge of, where people have the expectation that you’re gonna be there— Many of us have had the experience of walking into a room unexpectedly and hearing ourselves discussed, and while that is usually horribly awkward for everyone involved, the people talking about us were not necessarily committing a moral sin, particularly if we’d just done something to attract attention and make ourselves a subject of conversation.
I am not that famous, but I am weird in public, and I’ve walked into a room and heard people going “so wait is she straight or what”, I’ve heard people discussing my grieving process, I’ve heard people speculating about my dating life, and I’ve heard people discuss if I was just uncomfortable with my boobs based on how I dressed. I have walked in on people talking about my legs.
Were those my favorite social experiences of my life? No, but a) in most of those cases no one was doing anything wrong or impolite (one person in the grief conversation was being rude but everyone else was being even-handed), they were simply having a discussion without me in the room b) the victory condition for this experience for me is not to confront them and go “so you can’t figure out if I’m straight” while they stammer, or to vague this conversation later, it’s simply to back away silently and go get some water or something, and maybe text my friends like “guess what!”
The entire internet as it turns up if you name-search yourself is not a conversation that you’re in charge of, it’s a conversation other people are having without you there. And like— it’s most polite to talk about how attractive someone is not to their face! If you see an attractive person on the bus and text your friends about the incredible tits and tattoos on this person, that’s perfectly fine behaviour, while it would be rude to shout that at them across the bus.
I don’t know. Talking about a person, especially if they made themselves noteworthy in some way— ranging from local gossip to major celebrity— is just how human interactions work. This promise that we as a fandom have made to streamers that we will conduct every conversation we have about them like they’re in the room, and thus they will never stumble into awkward or horrifying conversations, is not realistic or sustainable and not how human interactions work with any other social situation. I don’t think it’s fair for the fandom and it’s not safe for the streamer either. I don’t know.
#discourse#fandom meta#this is somewhat prompted by the Ranboo developments but that’s also just a mess#that I don’t have good thoughts on other than uh oh
60 notes
·
View notes
Text
i don’t believe that everything in genloss just happened to be the way it was through just bad luck and innocent mistakes. i don’t believe that charlie would leave behind the axe if he actually had autonomy in that moment (and did you see the way he was holding that axe and spinning it around and shit? he was comfortable holding it. he knew damn well how useful it could have been). i don’t believe that ranboo totally could have escaped in time if he didn’t stop for charlie in the food court. there were too many close calls for it to all be coincidence and simple bad luck.
it was all part of the show. every single moment and every single decision. i think showfall meticulously planned all of these potential escapes because they knew damn well we, the audience, would love it. showfall knows how attached we’ve become to their characters after watching them for so long. they know that we would find the ending so much more compelling if we believed it was possible for ranboo to escape if only they had left charlie behind, if only they had brought the axe, if only they left before hetch told them everyone was still alive, if only.
#genloss#generation loss#gl!ranboo#showfall media#technically this is actually true anyway#real life ranboo did in fact make all of these decisions so the story would be more compelling#whether it's true in-universe or not#and what is generation loss if not a metaphor for the real world?#is showfall not (at least partially) representing the things that content creators do to themselves in order to please the audience?#do content creators not make themselves suffer in order to put on a good show for us?#genloss meta is my favourite i love it so much#rated rambles
83 notes
·
View notes
Text
c!bench trio fancam to die young by ke$ha
#meta on my dash for the first time in ages naturally i must make the world's stupidest shtpost#dream smp#crim speaks#tommyinnit#tubbo#ranboo#bench trio
33 notes
·
View notes
Note
hai!! im just curious on what your take is on c!ranboos enderwalk. thats a bit vague actually . like i mean what did you view it as? cus i know some people see it as morally grey, a different part of them entirely, etc. sorry if that doesnt make sense i just havent heard many people's opinion on it lol
ok this is a big and difficult question because ultimately we don’t have a conclusive answer in canon . so i’m gonna synthesize how i interpret what we do know.
i firmly believe that ranboo’s enderwalk state is, well, just ranboo. i think it’s a matter of what memories he has access to at a given point in time, how he acts on those memories, and it’s not nearly as black and white and ‘enderwalking’ and ‘not’.
there are things he knows, and doesn’t know that he knows, things he’s done that he doesn’t remember, and critically, he has relationships with people that he does not know about. it’s not as simple as enderwalking off-stream and not onstream, because we have examples of him acting on information he doesn’t usually have onstream and he has forgotten things he did while fully aware and not under duress (the shulker box deal with foolish, which he didn’t remember later when asked about it during the lessons stream).
it’s implied in some places that it’s a cyclical thing (in the arg, one of the pages refers to ‘the enderwalkers’ as ‘circadian’ (referring to circadian rhythms/sleep cycles)<-i think this is still sort of speculation but people tested it with the font layered over the crossed out section and it fit, arg also deals strongly with the clock motif, clock ticking and stopwatch as teasers for the arg, etc) though its also able to be triggered manually through strong emotions, pain, and fear. (splash water bottle, dream smile). Z claims uncertainly that it may be genetic, and their writings imply that ranboo isn't the only one though there's no suggestions as to where these other enderwalkers may be.
it oftentime feels like while he's enderwalking he has access to more memories--though it might simply be different memories. he for sure has access to more information about his past (eg. he remembers ender entirely sometimes, while most of the times we see him on screen he's in the process of relearning it, or is at least much more subtle about knowing it.) At times he acts on fully subconscious memories, like when he built the cobblestone end city over l'manhole without realizing exactly what it was or why.
what i think is most important to this understanding though, is that he is SO consistent in what he wants and believes. the things that change are who he knows and associates with, and what he remembers. but ultimately, he has the same goal. he just acts on it differently. people not sides, stopping conflict, being a mediator, ‘one happy family’. these ideas are something he consistently believes in all the time. it’s the context that changes, whether he’s working with dream on the community house, or with tommy and tubbo to kill dream, or wilbur and hitting on 16, he is willing to take extreme measures to pursue these goals.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: i don’t believe the purple eyes enderwalk trope is strictly diegetic. we know for a fact that ranboo is visibly indistinguishable while enderwalking and not, as we have seen him ‘enderwalk’ on other people’s streams, and he has interacted with people ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the state without them recognizing any difference. (cphil, cfoolish, and cawesamdude as some notable examples)
TLDR: It's just Ranboo, with more, or different, or all of his memories.
(link is to a clip of c!ranboo saying as much based on the information he had at the time)
39 notes
·
View notes
Text
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD okay.
so i watched the 8 hour jack stream(jesus) aka watched genloss top to bottom again and listened to his theories and stuff(i really vibe with the "kidnapped as kids" angle more now) and started thinking about some theories he and chat mentioned and.
now im thinking with like. ok its probably a pretty common theory, this post was what prompted this additional idea of mine actually, but ill explain it a bit:
the theory that, since sneeg and charlie can come back over and over again, and they have referenced like, refusing to do the cooking challenge in ep 1, and how charlie was playing the mouse trap but ate the cage, they have obviously done the same kind of scenes we saw ranboo do, right. and then in the Announcement video we see the same kind of "missing poster" type headshots of them, with the caption "Found them!"
i dont remember exactly where it was confirmed that showfall made the missing person posters, but like. yeah. these images are for missing posters like ranboo had.
and with sneeg being caught by the security in ep 3, he had tried to escape, just like ranboo and charlie. and i feel like this wasnt the first or last time they have tried this!
also, during that screenshot the announcer says "our hero will meet a cast of crazy characters, who you may recognize", aka the audience has seen these "actors" before in other things! this is their first live show but what have they made before...?
then, with one of the Very first lines Ranboo says in the first episode, "it wasn't supposed to be like this"... showfall/hetch made it seem like this is ranboos first show and he's being tested for how well he does as The Hero.
I dont think what we saw is Ranboos first time starring in a showfall production.
its the first live thing like the announcement video said but i think hetch lied when he talked about how its a test, i think Ranboo's been here at least a few go arounds, if not tens/hundreds/thousands of times.
WHICH MEANS in the end when he gets his memories back... theres an infinite amount of possibility of things they could remember for what they have been made to do in the past :)
Bc remember, while this is comedy->horror, it was still relatively tame and non-explicit (at least by my personal standards?) so it is quite possible they have been in more R rated horror stuff, slashers, gore, actual saw, some kind of even worse psychological horror things, but also that they might have had incredibly good experiences like love and joy and community and anything positive too, and to remember all that in a rush... oh boy
so i believe it is a circular reproduction, maybe they run through scenes repeatedly over and over while perfecting every little detail and getting different takes of genuine emotion but every time Real and a First experience... some kind of purgatory(omg christian hell reference) or endless torture or such...
ok that got really maybe unneccessarily angsty so heres my other thought:
i love me a fucking colour theory and colour symbolism! it bothered me a bit how like. in the promo game we get ranboo, then green friend/the villain(obviously charlie, tho the villain part still confuses me a Bit since its not quite true?), the blue friend/the taken(obvs sneeg) and then the red stranger/the saviour. and like it would logically follow that the red is hetch right?
jack when theorising said the titles are self descriptive, which i buy into, at least for the first episode context, charlie is the villain role, sneeg was taken(put in a cage and later snatched by the sharkciclester), and hetch was trying to help and save ranboo from this situation! but then in the second ep we also have red puzzler, and red niki? i WISH niki had. any kind of bigger role to build a Saviour type off of her but i dont think she does :( the puzzler is an option, since they make it seem like the puzzler tries to save ranboo? and thats actually a whole other thought like. since we know hetch was not actually helping ranboo, was the puzzler Genuinely helping them, and somehow showfall found out and killed him?? idk
ANYWAYS that colour coding falling apart a bit made me think about how ranboo is also red!! rgb trio yknow??
if the titles are self descriptive... well i dont think Ranboo really felt like The Hero much, especcially not in the end...
I think Ranboo is actually meant to be the Saviour.
Esp with the jesus coding!
I believe this kind of thing has happened many times before, with sneeg/charlie/ranboo/others realizing that shits fucked, and trying to escape, only to be caught and put back in the production. I think Ranboo(main character syndrome) was in a previous iteration the Saviour, who tried to help sneeg and charlie and others get out of there, to save them, save everyone. but they failed. got captured. once again waking up again with a "it wasn't supposed to be like this..."
and so the cycle continues, and the content wheel keeps spinning.
(ive only been in tumblr tags so feel free to link me any other ppl who arrived at the same conclusion)
#if you actually read to the end of this somehow ily take a cookie#this is giving me prologue/au ideas so i wanted to type it out to anyone who wants inspiration or smth#generation loss#genloss#ranboo#ranboolive#generation loss the social experiments#genloss meta#genloss theory#genloss au#bear.txt#i am bearpat#this post took so long bc i keep having more ideas but adding them all would make this even more incomprehensible i gotta stick to a thesis
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
Feeling a bit bored. Might post cranboo meta just to start something
#dsmp#dsmp meta#ranboo#ranboo meta#c!ranboo#A little bit scared of getting lynched but also I'm so boreddd
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
thinking about how showfall tried so hard to make charlie and ranboo enemies at every turn but they’re just. too close. they’ve been friends for too long. they love each other too much.
#this was brought on by the post show pictures of charlie covered in blood from hugging ran#I LOVE YOU GENLOSS META NARRATIVE!!!#they make me sick. where’s their duo name i need a tag#charlie slimecicle#slimecicle#ranboo#ogs#genloss
66 notes
·
View notes
Text
survival of the fittest: predictions for generation two
i said in rancord sub-boosty chat that i would probably write a comprehensive meta regarding my theories for generation two and then it got nuked bc i wrote way too much in one message w spoiler blinders so here it is!
spoilers for generation loss episodes one, two, and three.
given that i started watching genloss assuming it was an allegory for genetic algorithms in ai due to the language of “generations” (knowing now that generation loss, as a concept, refers to “degradation of quality resulting from imperfect reproduction techniques”) i think that there's an element both of refinement and of deterioration here. a couple of elements are at play:
for those unfamiliar, a genetic algorithm is a method by which self-learning ai acquire and refine their pool of knowledge. very generally speaking, ai are trained in “generations,” with each generation learning from its predecessor and improving upon itself to reach its ultimate goal. to this end, genetic algorithms use process of elimination to narrow down the best ai—in other words, natural selection: survival of the fittest. the strongest wins.
in the context of genloss, this seems to align with showfall media’s goal: creating the Perfect Hero for their Perfect Show. it also, perhaps, hints at what’s to come in generations two and three. i get the feeling that we will be seeing new ranboos, each one better equipped for the tasks demanded by the show than their previous iterations, and yet also retaining the knowledge that allowed the generations before them to survive. what are favorable traits within the ecosystem of showfall media? complacency? levelheadedness? the ability to perform unflinching normalcy under hellish conditions? at any rate, showfall media wants the generations of our hero, ranboo, to eventually acquire the skills to be the ideal protagonist and engaging pov character, whatever that may entail. it’d behoove us to keep an eye out for changes in generation two that seem influenced by the erratic and even unstable nature of generation one.
(on a slight tangent: this is also how our brains learn things, and is relevant to trauma formation and retention. we often develop trauma responses to specific things—triggers—because those are what helped us survive traumatic experiences. there is positive reinforcement here: because we survived, we will do it again, and again, and again. parallel to natural selection, our brains prune responses; this is why trauma survivors have altered responses to things that may seem completely normal for people who don’t share those triggers or responses with them. altered response in brain structures, particularly the amygdala (the so-called “fear center”) are part of the observed neurobiological differences btwn those with and without ptsd—but i digress.)
on to generation loss. this has probably already been theorized before so i won’t beat a dead horse, but in the context of knowledge retention and crystallization as mentioned above, i think we’ll also see the next generations deteriorate significantly. this may manifest as more frequent breaks between the narrative of the show and what’s actually happening (e.g. this clip [blood and emotional distress tw] of the showfall media illusion breaking and us being shown ranboo elbow deep in charlie’s blood) and likely more emotional turmoil and derealization on the part of generation two and three. i wonder if generation two will inherit generation one’s cracked mask as a symbolic gesture and as an implicit warning, but that’s just broad speculation (and i imagine that mask is pretty much crushed to bits by now).
also re:the idea of imperfect reproduction causing the phenomenon of generation loss. we have to remember that ranboo is not the only character to be rescripted. charlie has had multiple generations. sneeg has had multiple generations. it’s sort of implied jerma has had multiple generations just by proxy of how long he’d been part of the genloss project. circling back to charlie and sneeg, though: their generations were imperfect. they made mistakes that broke the flow and immersion of the show, and it cost them. the generation that made the mistake was killed, and a new generation—streamlined, scripted, perfectly seamless—was put in their place. i found sneeg particularly rebellious, and also wonder about the importance of that hat and how it seemingly granted him self-awareness. at a guess it was because the hat was a holdover from the previous episode so the continuity error was what fucked sneeg up, in which case the hat didn’t actually have to be put on sneeg for the same effect to happen, but sneeg did hold it together remarkably well—long enough to attempt an escape. i wonder if that, too, was scripted. i wonder if everything we saw, everything we were handed with both hands by showfall and by hetch, was scripted.
ultimately i was super intrigued by genloss and am hyperfixating on it, if you couldn’t already tell. it was an incredible production with an incredible cast, story, costuming—everything. i’m in love with it. thank you to ranboo and to everyone on the cast and crew for genloss and i’m very excited for what’s next.
other stuff that stuck out to me that didn’t quite fit into this prediction:
hetch isn’t the founder, he’s just someone who appears to have control over the production that ranboo specifically was starring in (which is still a lot of executive power). saying that makes me wonder if there are other shows showfall media is in charge of, and genloss is just one of them. i found it interesting that hetch told ranboo to keep his mask at the outset of ep3, and this was the main reason why i personally did not trust him.
according to the genloss bts twitter, there was a “live” ending. that said, i think hetch opening the floor for ranboo to speak directly to the audience was what ultimately swung the vote so far to “die.” i’ve seen people talking about this already: we swarmed the vote en masse for “live” until hetch told ranboo they would just be reprogrammed into the show again, and ranboo begged. they begged us to let them die. look at us. we were never going to be able to say no to them. (i also think ranboo’s death makes for a compelling story in the future regarding my theory of generations, but i don’t know what the “live” ending would have looked like, so this is fully biased.)
thinking about how the show was shaped to culminate to ep3 from the beginning. we’ve seen and heard hetch through it all, and he was the one to break the illusion for ranboo. every last bit was scripted. uhh something something i think ranboo’s rebellion against chat in ep3 was also intended, even if the specific code that he chose wasn’t scripted. it really defeats a person to realize nothing is in their control, you know? the freedom was an illusion after all.
sources
what is generation loss (concept)?
how genetic algorithms work
human-guided machine learning
optimization of knowledge acquisition
#generation loss#genloss#generation loss meta#genloss meta#generation loss spoilers#long post#ranboo#chrys analyzes#this is more concise and focused than the papers i write for school lmao
60 notes
·
View notes
Text
c!dream covering for c!purpled so he could escape is honestly so in character. like, yes, dream is ruthless and cruel and capable of horrible things, but the one thing he's always shown to be is protective of his allies.
not once in the prison escape did he try to leave without c!techno even when he could have multiple times (he had pearls and was begging for them to leave). anytime he got ahead of techno, he went back to wait for him.
those he works with in secret, like c!ranboo, he makes certain to cover all bases, regardless. the community house is a big example of that and then you have everything with c!punz, making absolutely sure no one suspected they were still allies.
i love it because it shows how nuanced he is as a character.
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
while I'm talking about c!alliumduo [Link]
my dream animatic for their first meeting and the prank on george's house would be at bizarre angles as it becomes increasingly obvious that we're being shown this through dream's perspective while he spies on them
it starts out cute and fluffy, and Ranboo And Tommy stay light. with an emphasis on it just being goofy fun between teens (the Flaming Penis Towers and silly signs are very important to me), but the tone starts ramping up and getting more and more uncomfortable with the editing. uncomfortable angles, breathing and Scraping sounds while he claws around, eventually cutting in and out with first person scenes of the person we're watching through Destroying other bases with puffy and clearly writing tommy's name down
we don't actually See dream until the very end, walking out of george's house once they've actually left
we Know that dream was spying on tommy at the time, and we Know that dream had a strange fixation and involvement with ranboo, and we Know that dream was intentionally framing tommy to try to get him exiled
combine all of these for something Tense that beautifully sets up what was to come <3
88 notes
·
View notes
Text
You know i dont think we always talk about how self sufficient the mansion was originally meant to be. Like how isolating it was, and how deeply reflective it was of c!Tubbo's trauma.
Like Snowchester was founded on being far, and it was ages before c!Tubbo even considered putting a Nether portal there because he did not want people to just stumble upon his lands. It was meant to be a place away from it all for people stranded after the fall of L'Manberg, which is why he asked c!Jack and c!Tommy to join him initially. It's covered in walls, and has nuclear armaments called Project Dreamcatcher for defense. As time went on he became more concerned with walls/having a defense tower/and even spreading out to spy on Las Nevadas because of his own paranoia to keeping everyone inside that place safe. He had an interrogation room and a hidden vault too.
And then we have the mansion, meant to be a home for a family, for Michael to have more room running around and for c!Ranboo to stay with him. It was huge yes, it was meant to be a home yes, but it also was supposed to be self sufficient. No longer would c!Tubbo need to go to his potato farm outside to get food, he planned to have entire automatic farm inside, partially because he loves automation, but also sort of the larger implication that I don't know if he intended to leave Snowchester, or even the mansion. So when I think Ghostboo sort of talks about the mansion in a way that implies its lack of homeliness it may be partially due to the fact it was abandoned and they never moved in, but it could also be a larger implication of how the place was almost designed to be isolated away.
This is something i thought about all day, pls feel free to add on.
478 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
rajputarts
Jaipur dhurrie
screaming-but-i-have-four-swords
Huzza!!
b0vidine
Skully ʚ✮ɞ Kane
slumberlandrecords
Target Practice