Tribe Twelve viewers

1. The size of DarkHarvest00 isn't an opinion, it's a fact. It's still a relatively small series compared to TribeTwelve (and especially compared to Marble Hornets). And just to be accurate in this, let's throw some numbers out here. MH's Youtube channel has 354,830 subscribers as I type this, and it's first video has 3,153,912 views. That gives us a baseline of what can be called a massively popular series. In terms of size, they're Box Office kind of level. TribeTwelve has 39,373 subcribers as I type and 228,036 views on it's first video. Compared to MH, that's a big difference - but we can expect that jump because TT isn't Box Office Level. However, it's still "big". It's part of the Big Three in terms of series discussed. Now, compared to TT, DarkHarvest is incredibly small. 16,081 subscribers and 84,377 views on it's first video is a very similar jump downward. If TribeTwelve is a "big" series, and DarkHarvest has 23,292 less subscribers than TT and 143,659 less views on the first video, then DarkHarvest cannot be a big series. It's not an opinion. (Keep in mind these numbers may change on small scale, but the large scale comparisons should not change. Also keep in mind it is not the smallest series, but that's also not what was brought up.)

Also, keeping on your Part 1, you did actually put DH down. By making anything look less in order to elevate something else, you are "putting down" whatever you made look less. That's the definition. You can compare without making something less than, but "DarkHarvest is a lot worse, it has shotgun sounds for pistols and submachine guns -_-" is not that.

2. Second, lemme address this quote here: "Although I also assumed that since you seem to know the realism of gunshot wounds you'd also know other realistic things about guns." This is not a true statement.  Someone can know a lot about guns and how guns work, and know nothing about how the human body reacts to such, and vice versa. Saying you must know about both in tandem is like saying an Actor who is trained in Acting must also know and understand how to build props and sew clothing. (And coming from someone who's in the Theatre Major in college, most acting majors don't remember a thing from their sewing and props classes.) Its not that its not a thing, knowing about both, but assuming, well, you know the old adage, "makes an ass out of u and me".

The other thing about this is that you're addressing a moment that requires exact gun knowledge (the DarkHavest gunshots) in comparison to a moment that a small child could realize looked off (the blood from the gunshot wound). One requires the knowledge of 1. what a shotgun sounds like, 2. what a machine gun sounds like, and also requires rewatching the moment several times because the first few get you too much into the moment to really care what the guns sound like because Chris and Alex were getting shot at. Even with a minor knowledge of guns and firearms (I can pick out a Taurus particularly quickly, if that gives you any credentials) I honestly couldn't tell the difference between one bang and another, mostly because I didn't care because Chris and Alex were getting shot at and that is a tiny bit more important, I believe, than knowing exactly what gun sound was just made. The other requires the knowledge of what looks fake and what does not. Most people have a general taste in how blood should look, because most people go to the movies and in most movies now adays someone gets shot. Media is literally training the currently movie-going generation into being better critics about their realism in things that require realism, because it moves the market forward and gives movie-makers something to strive for. Most days, it's generally accepted that blood is a red color, typically dark (especially in dark settings) and conforms to the shape of the clothing underneath is as it spreads. The specific TT scene had blood that was a candy red (in a room without any real lighting and only a blue ambient lighting from outside which would have actually made blood even darker because it's blue) and the spot stayed a perfect circle shape over a part of the body that couldn't hold a perfect circle if it tried. It's her back and she's on her side. There is no blood running in direction of gravity, and it spreads eventually in all directions, even ignoring folds in her clothing.  Ignoring gravity trumps whether or not a gunshot is the correct sound to the correct gun in terms of what's worse.

The other thing about it isn't even the quality - it's requoting what xyzombie said. Differing gunshots do not ruin the immersion, or how into the moment you are. It still sounds like gunshots and the moment is still just as tense no matter what specific guns are used. However, defying gravity is a different story - you either need to have established physics laws that defy such or need to be in the musical Wicked for defying gravity to not remove a person from the story and ruin the immersion. And that's the point he made originally. (For those unaware, Defying Gravity is a musical number from Wicked.)

3. On to Part Two! I don't think I need to explain how severe the mistakes in TribeTwelve actually are, contrary to what you say (if I do, please see the previous paragraph again because ignoring gravity is pretty severe honestly). However, I do think I need to address three writing conventions you bring up. 1, Comic Relief, 2, Unique Characters and Fear in Human Beings, and 3, Unreliable Narrators.

Comic Relief: Comic Relief is defined as "comic episodes in a dramatic or literary work that offset more serious sections" according to Google Definitions. The key term here is offset - comic moments are applied in a way after a dramatic scene to release some of the tension. Usually, it's placed so those crying can halt the tears, giving them an easy way to gently remove themselves from their catharsis - which is a release of emotional stress - or it's placed to provide catharsis, as laughter after a tense scene can release the same emotional stress. Where it isn't required is in scenes were tension needs to remain high - this is why you usually don't see much comic relief in the last half-hour of a movie, as they need to keep the stakes high and a giggle can make than all come crashing down. You say "It's possible that Adam Rosner is purposely making specific aspects laughable for comedic relief" but the scenes that get referenced as "so bad they're laughable" usually are not in the place for comic relief, besides the fact that "so bad it's good" is usually only reserved for low-brow mindless comedies or the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But just saying "they're not in the right place" isn't enough, so let's go through some examples. One good one is the gunshot wound. I don't need to go into why it was bad again, but think of it - that's supposed to be a very tense moment! Milo, or whomever with the voice, just shot someone who is supposed to be a well known, non villain character. We're supposed to feel things for them in that scene, with how it's set up. Anger with Milo, justice, something - but that gunshot wound is so bad it's laughable, and that's not a good place for it. It has the capability of diffusing all that anger, or justice (if you manage to get any at all, considering, but still) which is exactly the opposite of what Adam should want the audience to do. If he intended it to be comic relief, then that just proves he's a shittier writer than Steven Moffat, because at least the Moff in all his hellion glory can keep a scene tense. (Steven Moffat writes BBC Sherlock and Doctor Who, for those unaware). A second good example is the voice Milo had in said scene, for the same reasons. It's hard to feel things for Milo when he sounds like an anthropomorphic cartoon frog that sounds like she chain smoked fifty cartons a day. If you can't take it seriously, you can't feel things in a scene, and that's not how comic relief works. (If you need another example, do you remember when he attacked a bush? In a really tense scene? Yeah.)

Fear In Human Beings & Uniqueness: Okay, so we're in the horror genre, right? Slenderseries are horror video logs. If so, then this quote - "Not every protagonist has to be fearful of everything going on... despite that seeming to be common in Slender-series" makes no sense. Let's say you're getting stalked by a very unearthly, tall man who seems to be wearing a suit and has been known to commit gruesome murder - if you are not scared you are an idiot or incapable of feeling. Slenderman, as an entity, invokes several different common phobias - fear of the unknown, fear of things that look close to human but are not, fear of places with thick woods, fog, or other flora that make it hard to be entirely aware of your surroundings, and fear of being followed as well as a simple fear of not being in control - and it's common to see protagonists being afraid because that is in fact how people react to things that are scary. Being angry and frustrated are also good reactions, but here's the ticket - you get angry or frustrated out of a sense of fear. Why do characters in horror movies turn on each other and yell and verbally/physically attack each other? Because they are scared. Fear is an extremely powerful motivator, just as love is an extremely powerful motivator, and is a direct cause of a lot of these things.

However, just being angry at something that may kill you at any point without the hint of fear? That's not how people work. I mean, people do that, but they're also the ones that die really early on and generally react idiotically to everything, so that's not a good thing to be as a title character. And in terms of uniqueness, it's generally not a good thing if you can point out examples immediately after stating something is unique. Unique means literally "one of a kind" much like a snowflake, and having other examples is not unique. But you do bring up Alex, which is a good example of anger out of fear. Chris, too, is a really good example. They both lash out angrily, and Heather too (though hers from what we have seen is more muted in sarcasm than true anger). Several times, Alex specifically chased down cult members that have followed them, and I mean chased down. Why? Because knowing who is following them will alleviate part of the fear - that which is unknown. Knowing who's following them is better than not, and by taking control of the situation, or attempting to, it tamps down on that other general fear of not being in control. None of that is how Noah works. Noah is angry because he knows how to play emotions, and that will always be my personal greatest critique of Adam Rosner as an actor. But I'm not getting into his acting.

And before anyone mentions that chasing cultists isn't smart, I never said it was. Anger makes people do stupid shit. But at least with the DH Boys, they have a reason - fear. Noah is literally just angry because he's angry. There's no fear and that's honestly the problem.

Unreliable Narrators: Finally, the last point I'm making. You said "In regards to unreliable narrators, to me that makes the series more unpredictable to have an unreliable narrator so soon instead of later because with the latter it allows for retcons to be made and can add to confusion, and Marble Hornets is already really damn confusing when trying to analyze it". However, that's just... well, wrong. An Unreliable Narrator is "a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised". Credibility does not usually include future events, it includes the past. To be credible, your previous comments and accusations must stand true, and that's what is so super cool about an unreliable narrator. Generally speaking, an Unreliable Narrator is a person you are built up to trust, and then it is revealed that they are, by their own doing or by some outside occurrence, untrustworthy. The entire point is to literally make it so that everything they have ever said could possibly be false, and make is so that you have to scramble to determine what is true and what is not true of your own volition. You have to sit and think and say "I can trust this because this cannot lie" and then try and pick up the pieces. It makes a story amazing because you have to sit and think about the entire thing as a whole before moving on, as you cannot move forward critically in the same way. Noah fucked the entire thing up big time because he never gave the audience a chance to trust him explicitly. We got a very short amount of time with Noah before we realized that he wasn't trustworthy, which means that it didn't take very long at all to pick up the pieces because there was nothing to pick up. That's why it worked so well with Marble Hornets. It was video 71 out of now 80, which means that there were 70 previous entries before it that suddenly weren't trustworthy anymore. How many times did Jay say "I did a thing off camera" and we said "cool deal" because we trusted him? So many. And every single one of those moments was no longer a given. We could no longer look back and still think "cool deal" because we had no idea, and that is honestly terrifying. Jay could have killed a man and we wouldn't know and that's what makes an unreliable narrator super cool. Not that they can be "unpredictable" in the future, because that's almost a little boring, because it is predictable. With Noah, we now know not to trust him, so we can take everything he says with a grain of salt and he has what looks to be so much series left to go that it's not a good thing at all. Once you learn a dog can bite, you ignore the dog and the dog becomes something to the side of your mind because you know to ignore it, and it's the same with the series. Once you know a narrator can't be trusted, you can "ignore the narrator" and take what they say only half seriously, and the fact that they're untrustworthy becomes "something to the side of your mind" because you know it can be ignored. With MH, they're ending any video now so we have no time to be comfortable with the idea. Noah has ages for us to get comfortable not trusting him, and it's a shame.

Honestly, as a final thought, I've always said my biggest peeve with TT is that it has so much potential. It could go places. But Adam keeps doing shit like this, like making editing mistakes in a series that's made a name for itself in terms of CGI quality, or misusing writing devices in a way that leaves the series really bland, and it's disappointing. It's not being nitpicky, it's expecting a series to have a certain level of quality and a certain level of something because it is more popular than other series. It's expecting a series that has so many views to be in general better than a series with less, because that's how media works. People watch stuff that's good because it's good.  And it's disappointing, because Dark Harvest excels in acting and in story and in believability, and it's numbers are still so much lower than TT, when TT has so many flaws. And that's not nitpicky at all.

Let me begin by stating that none of this has been meant to bash any individual - whether it was JustinDGBZ, Adam Rosner / Nimbus, the fictional Noah Maxwell, or The Doctor. Alright, now let's dive in.

This size issue is non-debatable. Darkharvest00 is does not have as big of a view record as TribeTwelve as of this date. Its viewer count is lower. Crazythatcounts ran the numbers, showed you the math - it's blatantly a smaller series. It also started more recently, and with less experience with video editing or networking than Adam has currently with TribeTwelve. The way you two sound reminds me a great deal of modern beliefs in regards to climate change. Yes, people are entitled to their own opinions, but when there are statistics about temperatures, and records about an annual decrease in landmass, it's hard to argue against the fact that we're losing chunks of the polar icecaps every year. There's an extent to which things are debatable. Certainly somebody can believe that the number 5 is as large as the number 8, but there are established rules dictating that it is not. A word that crazythatcounts used, that I'm surprised that specifically The Doctor missed was "relative", considering TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Is it a "small series"? No. Is it as big as Tribe Twelve? No. If you disagree with this, I highly recommend you look at the two youtube accounts, their numbers of subscriptions, and their view counts per video.

The Doctor, above, stated "You seem to be failing to take into consideration the budgets, time constraints, and availability of props/supplies." That's simply not true. crazythatcounts, like myself, simply holds this youtube slenderman series to the same standards as any other youtube slenderman series. It's not an issue of money, or time, or availability, the issue is - one shouldn't rush out an entry if it's not going to be good even compared to the established standard of their own series. If Rosner was short on time, he could make an OOG announcement about needing more time - he's on his own time frame normally anyways, nobody is rushing him and he certainly takes his time when it's focusing on a single date for six+ months at a time. If it's money, one can get corn syrup and red food coloring for about $10 total - I just amazon'd it. I he needed $10 so bad, he could probably have asked his fans, or made a kickstarted. I'm just saying it would have been worth scrimping and saving up for realism purposes. Availibility? Assuming his local grocery didn't have corn syrup or food coloring, I'd suggest either Wal-Mart or Amazon. It's just that these changes are simple and easily fixable. I understand I'm viewing this series for free, and that one typically gets what they pay for, but I dunno. Easy fixes, man.

In regards to the blood. It's less specifically about how the blood spread, Justin, and more about how silly the entire thing looked (and how easily that could have been avoided). For starters, the coloration was a pinkish red. If he had added some sort of yellow, or orange, or even a green, and it would have been a lot better. Also, if he absolutely had to edit in the blood digitally, he could have re-shot the scene, and edited it in with a static break - like he does occasionally anyways, and made it so that when Mary fell, she didn't have a very visual wrinkle in her shirt where blood would be edited in later. It makes the perfect circle even less feasible, as the circle ignores the fold - physics. Also, as crazythatcounts stated, it travels upwards vertically just as much downwards vertically. It was almost like in CaughtNotSleeping when the water flowed backwards up out of the sink - though in that universe it actually made sense and was an intentional visual. A quick fix for this would be to have shifted the circle down, and expanded it in a single direction.

Finally, I want to say that I don't have some vendetta against TribeTwelve. In fact, I actually enjoy watching TribeTwelve - if I didn't, I wouldn't watch it at all. These things that are seemingly nit picky are just my observations of recent immersion issues. It honestly breaks my heart, because it has this series has so much potential, and has shown such skill. I don't expect perfection, and I don't think that if I suggested any changes that Adam Rosner would listen to me. That was never the intention of this thread. It has been from the start about my beef with how there are TT Fans that bash me all to hell when I announce an observation of a fault and either tell me I'm wrong, or that simply refuse to see it. This beef seems to be observed by others, and it is comforting to know that I'm not alone out here. I've also learned to chock this up to "fandumb" and not to lump all the fans of Tribe Twelve into this behavioral pattern.