YMMV / Tribe Twelve

• Arc Fatigue: The Fortunes arc became this in the eyes of some people by the series' end. Noah's trip to the Collective's dimension to retrieve Milo's journal happened way back in 2015, and we have yet to see the entirety of what he went through since. Combine Noah's lack of progress to escape the Boardwalk in each video, a significant amount of delay between updates (caused by Real Life Writes the Plot) and Noah's newfound nihilistic attitude on Twitter that ultimately doesn't amount to anything important, a lot of fans are tired of waiting for the arc to conclude, and would prefer to see Noah make progress in the present-day to do what Firebrand has been telling him to do since 2012, which Noah has seemingly forgotten about since Bridge to Nowhere. With the series now unofficially finished, this arc is hated even more, due to it never coming to a proper conclusion and feeling like a very, very long filler section.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Firebrand a force of good who only wants to do what's right for his past self? Or is he a psychotic asshole who is only working for his own self-interests?
  • Karl Maxwell is seen as an angry, senile old man by both Noah and his mother who disowned Mary Asher once he discovered that she could see Slender Man. But is he really that, or is he a Properly Paranoid grandfather who is trying to do what he can to keep himself and his family safe from an awful legend that he was attacked by when he was younger?
    • Adding onto the question of his sanity above: During the Boat Incident, did Karl intentionally kill his own wife by unfastening her life vest just to ensure the safety of his book as Mary Asher puts it? Or did he do so unintentionally and lives with that guilt every day like Sharon Maxwell believes?
  • Mary Asher is one who takes the cake. Is she a troubled, confused woman who wants to get away from Slender Man, or is she a selfish bitch who only cares about herself, willing to give up her own son to Slender Man in order keep herself alive? Events in-game seem to indicate that it's the latter.
• Awesome Music: While they're usually played in reverse, many of the song choices in the Observer's videos qualify as this.
  • "Interception" uses a reversed version of Pendulum's "The Other Side". Word of God states that it was chosen not only because it fit the subject matter of the video perfectly, but because it's one of the creator's personal favorite songs.
    • The video also utilizes Gotye's "State of the Art" and Boards of Canada's "The Devil Is In the Details".
  • The music in Pitfall and Sisyphus counts too, which includes highlights such as more Pendulum, Gnarls Barkley, Guns N' Roses, the neverending stairs theme from Super Mario 64, the drums from Jumanji, and Pink Floyd.
  • Taken up to eleven in Facade, where at least forty songs appear during the course of the video. This includes music that plays in the background naturally, some 90's show themes on Noah's television, and songs that play on the radio in Noah's house.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • In the second half of the Thanksgiving Footage, there is a scene in which Noah films a grandfather clock going off loudly, commenting on it’s creepiness. This doesn't go anywhere, and the video cuts away almost immediately afterward.
  • In Severance, a bleeding man (later revealed to be Michael Andersen) randomly appears in HABIT's bathroom, coughing profusely as Noah looks on. Aside from Noah asking who it was and HABIT dismissing him, this bleeding man is never mentioned again. Apparently this scene was supposed to foreshadow a video on the MLA channel where HABIT tortures Michael in a bathtub, but Dylan Sindelar lost it before it could be uploaded, causing the scene to become this.
  • Bridge to Nowhere has a few scenes in it that make little to no sense and are never explained. One particular example includes Noah entering some kind of laundromat that fills with distortion once he's inside, which ultimately teleports him to another place in HABIT’s realm. Word of God states that this particular sequence was based on a dream the creator had which had the distortion "rejecting" Noah's presence, but it still doesn't make sense from an in-game standpoint.
  • When Noah is spinning around in front of the Observation Tower during the events of Sisyphus, the garbage can next to the stairs suddenly begins making knocking sounds. When Noah opens it, a large amount of eyes are revealed to be inside, making a loud noise as the lid is opened. It’s never explained where those eyes came from, and that scene is never mentioned again.
  • Also in Sisyphus, there is a scene where Noah suddenly warps back to his house somehow without warning, only to fall backwards and end up at the Boardwalk again after being surprised by an unknown person walking in his house. This is never brought up again.
• Complete Monster: Mary Asher, Milo's mother, was haunted by the Slender Man as a child and, living in fear of her future death, would try to sacrifice her family in her place. Joining the Slender Man-worshipping cult, the Order, Mary killed her two ex-husbands, and conceived Milo in the first place as a future sacrifice; she also tried to conceive more children for this purpose. Milo's journal expands on this; Mary had Milo taken to into the Order, regularly having them drink his blood; used drugs and gaslighting to keep him in line, and utilized physical abuse at the slightest resistance. Mary self-harms to get Milo institutionalized and implies she'll have his beloved cat put down to punish him for standing up to her. Mary also set her sister's house on fire while her young nephew Noah was asleep, burning his babysitter alive; and helped bomb and capsize a boat dozens of people were on, killing her mother and another young nephew. Mary claims to be a victim trying to protect her family, but both Noah and Milo see right through her as a selfish coward willing to sacrifice her family to ensure her own survival.
• Creepy Awesome: It varies from member to member, but some of the Collective look really kickass, especially Deadhead◊ and the Observer, especially in INTERUPPTION when the latter looks up to grin at the camera.◊ This◊ group shot of the Collective looks pretty awesome, too, as is this◊ one. Oh and Firebrand toowhen he calls himself "A rogue god".
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Ever since glimpsing him in Severance, Slenderverse fans started tripping over themselves guessing who the bleeding man in HABIT's bathroom was. Examples of those guesses include Lee from Whispered Faith, Chris from Dark Harvest, a future version of Noah, and Michael Andersen of MLAnderson0. A few years after the video was released, Word of God indirectly confirmed that the man in the bathroom was indeed Michael.
  • The identity of the roommate that Sisyphus Noah mentions is also ripe for speculation, especially since the only hint we've gotten is that he had been in a similar situation to Noah's. The two biggest suggestions fans have come up with include Kevin Haas (due to Firebrand mentioning that "the dark times" would bring him) and Robert Asher (due to being confirmed to still be alive somehow).
  • The other idea regarding Robert Asher is that he's actually Scriniarii, given that the man himself has admitted to being forced to watch his family die multiple times, as well as showing contempt to the Collective member Deadhead, who was heavily involved with Robert's immediate family.
• Franchise Original Sin: One of the biggest criticisms of the Fortunes Arc is how Noah becomes much more nihilistic and cowardly, refusing to make progress on trying to fight the Collective in favor of lounging around his house and complaining about his situation until the Collective forces his hand. This isn't too dissimilar to Noah was portrayed in Season 1, with the final few episodes even having him give up entirely on fighting back and getting wasted in the hopes of being taken by the Collective. However, the circumstances regarding Noah's Heroic BSoD are far more justifiable in Season 1, where he had to deal with indirectly getting Sarah and Kat killed at Slender Man's hands, as well as accidentally revealing to the Order that Chris and Alex are affiliated with him, thus restarting their hunt towards them. Season 2 on the other hand, has Noah break down for far less traumatizing reasons: being given a lesson on Severance by HABIT (where he's never in any actual physical danger), and getting lost in the Candleverse shortly after. Subsequently, Noah's stalled progress, combined with his shitty attitude online and long gap between release dates, made him far less of a sympathetic character, and became irritating for viewers.
• Growing the Beard: The early submissions are a little too reminiscent of Marble Hornets, and perhaps a little too realistic, with some Plot Holes that take you right out of the experience. Night Recordings and My Grandfather Karl have seriously turned the series around, however.
  • Word of God in this interview is that the series originally started as an homage to Marble Hornets; after it was posted on UnFiction forums as a side-story and was criticized for being too similar to MH, Adam (Noah's actor) decided to expand the series to avoid having it go down in infamy.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Happens in The Live Stream Incident. Around 3 minutes in, Noah points his camera at his streaming webcam and laughs that he's recording himself. 19 minutes in, Noah somehow sees another version of himself in his room recording him. It's Firebrand.
  • In DEATHTRAPEXODUS, Firebrand shows us a visual of Noah's (and to an extension, the creator's) house being submersed in a dark, black liquid, while telling Noah to "prepare for the flood." In 2017, that visual very nearly came true with Hurricane Irma hitting the area where Noah/Adam's house was located. Thankfully, it shifted from a Category 4 to a Category 2 very suddenly, but at the time, it made Firebrand's words seem very prophetic in a dark way.
  • Ember Malo's portrayal of the character isn't quite as cringeworthy anymore now that Milo's journal reveals the in-universe explanation for why he was acting so unnaturally: Milo was so terrified and determined to keep Noah safe from the Administrator's influence that he attempts to poorly hide it.
  • The scenes where Noah's night vision turns red whenever he's in the Collective's dimension is much more horrifying come 2020, after skies in the western United States became red due to record-breaking wildfires burning in the area.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When the Observer first revealed the existence of his fellow Collective members on Formspring, many people initially misread Mr. Scars as "Mrs. Cars", due to the Observer's notorious lack of spacing in his typing. Fast-forward to 2020, Mrs. Cars doesn't exactly sound as awful of a name after it came out that Milo's former actor is now a trans woman.
• Ho Yay:
  • The Observer writes on Noah's bare stomach and strokes his face in November 11th. He also claims to have "taken quite a fancy" to Noah in INTERCEPTION. *shudder*
  • Although it's subtle, HABIT seems to engage with this with Noah as well in Bridge to Nowhere. If one speeds up the scenes where Noah visits the laundromat and the looping stairs, it's shown that "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos and a heavily distorted "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli can be heard in the background.
• It Was His Sled: It's practically common knowledge at this point that Firebrand is Noah from an alternate future.
• Memetic Loser: In a world where most of the protagonists coming into contact with Slender Man are complete losers, or fucked in the head, Noah Maxwell is by far the biggest punching bag of all of them, both in and out-of-universe. In-universe, the Collective loves to taunt and trick the poor man whenever they aren't scaring him shitless or threatening him to deliver Sebastian's journal to them. Out-of-universe, fans love to make fun of and draw pictures of Noah suffering and complaining about the situation he's in. Unfortunately for the latter group, Noah has some Medium Awareness of what fans say about him online, which is why his hostility towards viewers of his channel grows each day.
• Misaimed Fandom: A good chunk of the fandom seems to believe that Firebrand has severe burn scars on his person after he was forced into the Collective (likely due to the final frame of The Live Stream Incident, and the Observer’s picture of him posted during the Valentine’s Day livestream). The creator has expressed confusion about this idea on social media, due to it not being canonized in any way in the series proper.
• Narm: The "eveything's so boring here" conversation in Submission 2.
  Noah: "All people do around here is just come and fish and it's just really boring."
  Milo: "I never saw the point in fishing. It's kinda boring."
  • Noah pulling out a switchblade and stalking around his house, stabbing at the bushes angrily. The creator has lampshaded this.
  • I just had to postpone this video. For my sanity's sake.
  • Noah's Cluster F-Bomb tendencies veer in and out of this territory and Narm Charm.
  • The awkward, rushed, initial exchange that Noah has with Sarah's father in "Thanksgiving Footage: Day 2", can really only be explained by either terrible social skills, bad dialogue writing, or both.
  • Sarah's father also apparently slept through Noah's crazy screaming but woke up when he was packing to leave.
  • At one point in Nature Trail Visit, Noah looks up to see the Slender Man on top of the observation tower, and in a full rage, runs toward it, making the following declaration, among other things.
    "You fucked with Noah! Here I come, motherfucker!"
  • "I'm gonna shove it so far up your ass you're never gonna get it out!" (although that was probably supposed to come off as kind of pathetic)
  • Noah accusing The Observer of being a hipster in Halloween Hotel.
  • Noah panicking during "The Live Stream Incident" when he realizes he was the one hiding in the closet on the night he found the Device:
    "OH MY GOD! IT'S MEEEEEEEE! NOAAAAAHHHHHH!"
    • Noah is "drunk" during the Live Stream and the acting is just... amazingly bad.
    • He actually was drunk. It's more of a case of Reality Is Unrealistic.
  • The Slenderman's brief appearance in "Fortunes". Not only does the shot of Noah at the boardwalk look exactly like a Daily Show style green-screen gag, but the Slenderman himself just kind of slides into shot like some kind of clipart.
  • Noah's overly-loud reaction when the Observer tweets a picture of Firebrand during the 2012 Valentine's Day stream. "Jesus fucking CHRIST!"
  • From November 11th, Noah's reaction while falling off his bed is a little too close to Luke Skywalker's reaction to being told who his father is.
    "No, no! It can't be! No! No! It can't be! Th-that's, that's, that's impossible!"
  • The second blogspot post Noah makes has him treating the viewers as though they are attending a "virtual funeral". It really doesn't work.
  • After fleeing from his future self at the end of "Sisyphus", Noah goes from tearfully and hysterically denying what he saw...to letting out a confused "Huh?" upon discovering the fake dice in the span of a few seconds that you can tell was badly dubbed in.
  • Speaking of bad dubs, the voice actors' dialogue for the news reporters in "Facade" glaringly contrasts with the mouth movements of the actual people shown onscreen. The fact that the main anchor has a remarkably young voice that's supposedly coming out of a 40-50 something year old man's body just makes this worse.
• Narm Charm: Noah's constant cursing sometimes feels more like an endearing character quirk than bad acting. "Fucking fuck!" That's our Noah! In fact the series as a whole could be seen as this for some of the fans who really love this series.
  • In Rendezvous, the Observer announces his presence at the end of the Boardwalk by whistling Yondu Udonta style. It's utterly ridiculous, but considering the fact that it's so unexpected (plus the fact that it's the freakin' Observer who does it), it works. The same can be said for Slender Man's unintentional T-pose.
  • In Facade, Noah avoids taking the pill Kevin offers him by...throwing a water bottle and loudly shouting "YEET!" at him. Stupid? Yes. Hilarious? Absolutely. Still somehow awesome? You bet your ass.
• Nightmare Retardant: This April Fool's video parodying the Observer videos. It's in the same exact style, it's by the creator of Tribe Twelve, and it's just hilarious.
  • The third party of this series is called the Observer. Quickly subverted when you watch his video posts.
  • In November 11th, we see the Observer's face. That's all really creepy, until you realize he's been wearing zebra-print glasses this whole time....
• Overshadowed by Controversy: In September 2020, series creator Adam Rosner was revealed to have groomed and acted inappropriately towards many underage girls for years, and refused to take responsibility for it when outed. Since then, Adam has disappeared from the internet, all of his collaborators have cut ties with him, and most former fans have gone to great lengths to condemn his actions and avoid future association with the series.
• Paranoia Fuel: After Night Recording, Noah no longer feels safe in his own home. Odds are, you won't either.
  • November 11th: The Observer's face appears under Noah's bed as he is captured. Have fun sleeping!
  • Mary Asher Phone Call cranks the paranoia up to eleven. What's worse than having a cadre of Slenderminions stalking you? Finding out that they've been monitoring your every move throughout your entire life. By the way...they're in your house right now, watching you as we speak. *shudder*
• Seasonal Rot: Even before its premature finish, Season 2 was considered by many people to be of significantly lesser quality than Season 1.
  • After seemingly hitting its stride at its beginning, the series began losing viewers during the "Fortunes Arc" due to video updates slowing to a crawl (usually happening annually at best) and Noah's increasingly apathetic, cynical, Jerkass attitude on Twitter, which grew grating for fans after a while.
  • The videos themselves also were subject to criticism. While the visual Mind Screw aspects were certainly taken up to eleven and wowed viewers immensely, many complaints arose that the content was spectacle over substance, with Noah himself spending most of his time trapped in his house or at the Boardwalk with little progress being made.
  • Though the addition of Milo's Journal entries attempted to help compensate for this, the entries themselves weren't nearly as popular as the actual videos, and felt more like a distraction from the main story instead of enhancing it.
• Signature Scene: Firebrand's infamous Flipping the Bird scene is probably what many Slenderverse fans will consider to be the most iconic part of the series.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The picture of Milo Asher's corpse that the Observer leaks onto Twitter looks less like a suicide and more like Milo had just fallen asleep. The photo itself is also has a terribly photoshopped shadow to make it look like he's lying on the floor, when he really isn't.
  • An audible version of this trope occurs in The Order. It's pretty easy to hear that the "Observer's" laughter that plays as Noah is running from the aforementioned Order is clearly a woman laughing, especially once Pitfall was released.
  • The Live Stream Incident. Averted with the video mind you, but the livestream itself had a lot of errors. It was only recorded for 30 seconds, and while INTERCEPTION was broadcasted, only the audio from the video was present.
  • The stacks of cash in Mr. Scars' briefcase aren't the typical green that money is made of, but solid white instead. Noah himself suspects that the bills are counterfeit.
  • DEATHTRAPEXODUS has a scene where a nervous Kevin Haas is shown looking around a forest while Firebrand tells Noah he must kill Kevin in order to save him from the Observer's grasp. Due to a rendering error however, the text that says this is incredibly hard to see, leaving it frequently overlooked for first viewers.
  • During Crawlspace, Slender Man is shown to have white pants with a black jacket, due to the camera's infrared vision seeing the the jacket and pants as two different materials. Word of God states that he discovered the error too late in production and didn't have time to fix it, so he just kept it as is.
  • In Pitfall, the scenes where Noah supposedly keeps looping back to the observation tower are less than stellar due to the very noticeable jump cuts ruining the effect.
  • It's quite obvious that the news reporters in Facade aren't actually real, as the dialogue for the anchor and field reporter doesn't come anywhere close to matching up to the mouth movements of the respective people.
  • A few episodes in the Fortunes arc have sections where once can tell that Noah's dialogue was recorded in post, due to a slight room reverb following what he's saying, which shouldn't be possible in an outdoor setting.
  • At the end of every video, one of the Collective members will insert a hidden frame at the very last second of the video to force viewers to go back and pause the video at the right time in order to see what the image is. Unfortunately, this effect doesn't work for those who watch the video on mobile phones, as instead of cutting the video and showing more video suggestions like they would on a computer, it instead just stops the video, leaving the viewer with the freeze frame stuck where it is. Though this occasionally can be averted, as the freeze frames will occasionally be very dark, preventing one from seeing it clearly.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nobody was expecting Jeff from Everyman HYBRID to show up in Bridge to Nowhere, having been killed in his own series and been dead for over a year at he time the video was uploaded.
  • In a meta sense, it's very bizarre for HABIT of all people to be teaching Noah about the Rune of Severance, especially since the EMH crew has little to no connection to the symbol.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Noah gradually becomes this after the events of Season 2's Bridge to Nowhere. Although the audience is supposed to root for him as he struggles through the Fortunes Arc and learns how to fight and potentially defeat the Collective, it all falls flat when you realize that Noah has done absolutely nothing to make progress on what he's learned, other than occasionally upload journal entries and videos detailing what happened to him at the boardwalk back in 2015. This, alongside his nihilistic and metaphorical tweets in German complaining and moaning about the situation he has done nothing to get out of make Noah come across as a pathetic and unlikable protagonist that few people empathize with.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The main strength of Tribe Twelve is the excellent Slender Man effects. In darkness, in motion, with tentacles waving around, it always looks good.
  • Taken up to eleven in Unknown Caller, which gives probably the best shot of Slender Man's tentacles of any series, with very fluid motion. We don't get to see his main body, but that arguably makes it scarier.
  • HELLOTHERE has a visual style reminiscent of The Film of the Book A Scanner Darkly. Slendy shows up in the last second of the video. Just to say "we are always watching you Noah". It is terrifying, as well as impressive.
    • The Ultimatum video from The Token Letter seems to be from the same person who made HELLOTHERE and looks just as good.
  • And COMECLOSER continues with some frighteningly impressive video effects.
  • Nature Trail Visit was one of the Most Triumphant Example for this series. No less than FIVE shots of Slendy with tentacles waving everywhere.
  • November 11th has a great shot of Firebrand that shows us that members of the Collective are always shrouded in darkness.
  • Mary Asher Phone Call ramps up the standard even higher with Slendy's Flash Step.
  • The 11-11-12 Livestream gives us the Mind Screw of Noah filming his future self right before the timey-wimey ball starts getting batted around.
  • DEATHTRAPEXODUS probably show's TT's best Collective video yet, with several different members being shown off for the first time, as well as some insane mind screws that almost look impossible to pull off. See for yourself.
  • Sebastian's journal in Rendezvous. Yes, really. It seems anything can have amazing visual effects. However, what's in it isn't exactly German scripture...
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: "Tribe Twelve"? "Noah"? "Asher"?
• The Woobie: Noah. His cousin dying ends up as the least of his troubles. He's stalked and menaced by things he doesn't understand, he's lost huge amounts of time doing who-knows-what, his mind is gradually cracking, and all of his attempts to run away have failed. He's alone in his struggle and has no flipping idea how to even go about solving his problems.
  • Kevin, too. During a moment of clarity he writes a letter to Noah begging him to kill him so that the Observer can't use his body anymore. The Observer doesn't even let him take the pencil off the paper before having the last "Kill me" lead into a crude sketch of an Observer trollface.
  • But most of all, Milo. He attempts to keep Noah and his family safe by killing himself, only to end up coming back to life horribly as Mr. Scars and is forced to kill his own mother while under Slender Man's control. And to add onto things, he was forced to live a wretched life involving an abusive mother who forces him to take Phlebotinum Pills to keep him from remembering things, being used as a tool for the nefarious objectives of a Religion of Evil, being stalked by Slender Man since the age of seven, and possibly being responsible for Kevin's transformation into the Observer. It makes it even more heartwarming that after all the shit he's been through, he's willing to help Noah stop Slender Man.

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