#but it had a MUCH steeper drop. it was totally fine until the last bit of ep11

[beachboysnatural]

When The Phone Rings actually beats out Queen of Tears for having the most bonkers ending

[solavillain]

Pas de Deux Ch. 1: A New Visitor

+pairing: Spinel x fem!Reader +genre: Drama, romance, angst +warnings: None (for now) +word count: 3.1K +Chapter 1 / ? next chapter

Read on AO3!

Summary: You love spending your summers in Beach City. You’ve come here since you were young, and have since befriended Steven and the Crystal Gems. You thought all Gem conflict had ended, and could finally spend a summer relaxing with your friends. However, your world flips upside down when a new Gem enters into the mix.

“Shit, I’m so fired!“

This is the only thought racing through your head as you bold down the boardwalk on the way to your café job. It’s not glamorous, or particularly well-paying, but you’d been coming to Beach City every summer since you were a child, and you weren’t about to stop that tradition now that you were in you final year of college. You figured out a way to stay in town and earn some pocket money, so you were good to go.

“Not if I get fired for being late again...” you groan internally and pick up the pace. Finally, you round a corner and bolt through the door, and behind the counter of the café, glancing at the time on the register.  

“20 minutes late, y/n...” your manager warns, giving you a side look as you head to the back of the store to get yourself collected. “How do you manage to be late when you live, like, 5 minutes away?” “It’s a talent?” You say, chuckling nervously before ducking to the back. At least it doesn’t seem like firing is on the table for today.

Once you’re up front and working, the day passes by like any other. You’d had an early shift, so when you break for lunch it’s right around 1 o’clock, a perfect time to sit outside and admire the beachfront view while sipping on your drink of choice. You glance down the boardwalk, past The Big Donut, to where Steven and the Crystal Gems live. You hadn’t really interacted with them much when you’d visited with your family as a child, but once you started coming over the summers by yourself, you’d slowly gotten to know them all.  

Steven had started off like a typical kid, but very quickly came to be a mature and thoughtful young adult, someone whom you looked up to. You didn’t know the full details of what had been happening out in space the past few years, but from what the Gems told you, he was doing amazing work. He was always so candid with his thoughts and feelings, and you found yourself wanting to spend time with him every summer you were working in Beach City.  

Garnet had intimidated you quite a bit at first; since you had mostly seen her around when the Gems were fighting something in town. But she seemed to come out of her shell as Steven got more involved in Gem goings-on, and every so often she stopped in the café with Steven and you found yourself at ease around her, content to talk about everything or nothing. She was a true leader.

Amethyst was your go-to for nights out, especially since Little Homeworld had popped up and more and more gems had begun moving in- Amethyst seemed to get along with all of them. You were a bit shy the first time she’d brought you over, especially since she already seemed pretty close with some of them. You had met Lapis, Bismuth and Peridot a couple times, but they hadn’t really left the countryside until Little Homeworld, and they’d been so busy building the past two summers you’d been in Beach City that you hadn’t gotten the chance to know them as well as you’d liked.  But Amethyst had promised to change that soon, since construction was almost done and she’d have time for hanging out again. You were really looking forward to that.

Pearl was, arguably, the gem you were closest to. You had a lot in common- a love of music and the arts, a very strong need to be clean and organized, and you were both rather emotionally open with each other, which was nice and refreshing. Even if there was a bit of a disconnect, with her being less familiar with human affairs, she was still your favorite person to see whenever you went over to the Temple. She had even agreed to start training you in self-defense this summer, just for fun- she knew you probably wouldn’t need it against any gem threats, but you thought it might be useful for human matters, at least.  

You smiled warmly down the boardwalk, as a peculiar sight pulled you from your reminiscing- Steven emerging from a newly pink Lars’ head. You sat up straight and leaned forward, trying to get a better look. You hadn’t seen Steven in a very long time, as he’d been traveling the universe with the diamonds, as Pearl had told you when you arrived this summer and found him gone.   Garnet had arrived at the shop a few minutes earlier, and she pulled out a chair for Steven at the table of gems. You smiled warmly at the group, wishing you could go over and join them. But just as you thought that, the 2-minute warning you’d set on your phone went off, signaling that it was almost the end of your break time.

You sighed and stood up slowly, taking one last glance at the group by the Big Donut, where Steven was heading to the newly installed warp that connected Beach City to Little Homeworld. You hoped you could meet up with him later and catch up on all that had been going on the past couple years.  

The rest of your shift passed by without much happening. You saw a couple new gems walk by outside the shop, but they didn’t come in, reminding you that not all gems ate everything in sight like Amethyst. You smiled to yourself at the thought, and glanced at the clock, eager to get off work and go visit everyone.  

Finally, it was time to go, clocking out once your replacement mid-day shift arrived. You said a quick goodbye to your coworkers and gathered your things, walking out the door into the hot sun. You took a deep breath of the salty sea air, and smiled to yourself. Finally it was time to go catch up with everyone. You had seen them all rush down the boardwalk towards the temple a little while ago, from your position in the café, so you turned left and began to head over.

As you approached the beach, you glanced up towards the lighthouse, and a smile broke out on your face. Laying on the hill were your four favorite people- Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Steven, and they all looked totally contented and relaxed. You started the trek up the rather large hill, but suddenly the sky darkened.  

All four of the Gems suddenly sat up, and from what little you could see of their facial expressions from this far away, they did not look relaxed any longer. In fact, they were all looking towards the sky...

Glancing up, your stomach dropped and you scrambled back towards the base of Lighthouse Park, trying to put some distance between you and the very, very large object that was currently descending from the clouds. You knew that, at the very least, it couldn’t be any of the Diamonds Pearl had told you about- Steven had been helping them, teaching them to be good...there was no way they would attack the Earth now, especially after all he’s done. So who...?

As the giant object neared the ground, a drill head emerged from the bottom of it, and with a thunderous boom, it inserted into the hill, right in front of your eyes. You stood in shock for a moment, until you realized you couldn’t see where Steven and the Gems were anymore.

“Oh my god. What if...?”

You shook your head, willing away the burning sensation beginning in your eyes. “No,” you thought, “they’re fine. I’ll just...”

You glanced anxiously back towards Beach City, torn between wanting to get somewhere safe, and wanting to make sure your friends were okay. You turned back towards the hill and the giant injector, and started making your way up the hill, mentally preparing yourself to help in any way possible.

“This damn hill is a lot steeper than I remember it being,” you think, as you push even faster, racing to try to get to them in time. Not that you even know what’s going on- you can’t hear or see anything, which worries you more than if you had heard fighting sounds.

Finally, you reach the injector, and you make your way around it. Just in time to see a menacing, stretchy pink Gem poof Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl.

You gasp quietly, still unsure if you should get involved. You know Steven is just as strong, if not stronger, than a lot of the Gems you’ve met. And you’re full human, you can’t poof and come back...you decide to wait until you’re sure Steven needs your help.

“That’s enough!” You hear him cry as he pulls his shield from his gem.  

“Aw, miss your friends already, Steven?” A sickly sweet voice asks, prompting you to come out from behind cover to glance once again at the pink Gem.

“Well, don’t worry- you're right behind ‘em!”

She leaps forward, spinning towards Steven in an acrobatic display, the scythe-like weapon in her hand glowing menacingly. The weapon breaks through Steven’s shield and passes through him- he shudders and trembles, but you can see that he’s ultimately fine.  

“Hah! That was nothing!” He says triumphantly. You relax a little- he's half human, gem weapons don’t really effect him. He could handle this on his own.

The other Gem chuckles menacingly, “Then I guess you won’t mind if I do it again!” She slices through him, laughing a high pitched maniacal laugh all the while. Though you know Steven is usually safe from...what was it they had called them? Gem destabilizers? You knew he was safe from those, but still...it couldn’t feel pleasant.   “Cut it out!” Steven cried out, finally seeing a break in the attacks, and grabbed the scythe.  

The pink Gem narrowed her eyes, “You don’t poof, do you? Hmm. Figured as much. Just wait! Your human half won’t stand a chance against my injector...not after what I just did to your gem!”

With that, your eyes widened. Was she going to do something to him right now? What happened to Steven’s gem? You couldn’t just stand by and watch her hurt Steven.

“Hey!” You called out, trying to mask the wariness in your voice. “Get away from him!”  

You stepped out from behind the injector, tried to remember every bit of training Pearl had given you thus far, and began to make your way over to them.

“Y/n, don’t!” Steven cried out, still struggling with his hold on the other gems’ weapon. “Well now, who is this, Steven? You didn’t introduce me to your little...ah, a human friend!” She grinned at you, her eyes going wide and bright pink. “Sadly, you’ll have to wait a little while to reap the benefits of my lovely new toys. This ol’ thing here won’t do much to ya...but that will.”   She gazed up at the giant pink injector that you had just walked out from. You had no idea what it did, but you really didn’t like what she was insinuating.  

With her focus momentarily elsewhere, Steven saw an opening and wrenched the scythe away from the invading gem.   “Just...stop!” He yelled, and passed the weapon through her. She cackled manically, one half her body sliding down the other almost grotesquely- even though you knew she was only projected light, the sight still made your stomach turn. Finally, she poofed, and with a soft thud, fell to the ground.

“Ugh...” Steven groaned, falling to his knees. “Guess I should bubble her...” He tried to form his pink bubble, and failed. You furrowed your brows- you had never seen his powers do that in recent years, he’d had very good control over them for a while now. He tried once more and couldn’t even get anything to form this time.   “What...?” he whispered softly, staring at his hands, and then looked over to the scythe. “Y/n, whatever that is...I think it did something to my gem. That’s not a gem destabilizer, it’s...something else.”  

You put a comforting hand on his back, and held out the other to help him stand.   “No use worrying about it now... let’s just get everyone back to a safe area, and we can figure everything out when they all...come back. Maybe we could call Greg?” “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. Let’s go back to my house,” he said softly, standing up and heading back down the hill.  

You threw a passing glance at the injector, tilting your head back to see the very top of it. It was full with bright pink...stuff. Whatever that was, it wasn’t gonna be good.

Back at Steven’s house, you stood in the kitchen, watching Steven silently fret over his friends poofed gems. You could tell he was extremely worried, and wanted to give him some space. He was looking more and more anxious by the minute. Maybe you should say something... “Steven, I-” “Steven!”   Just then, Greg burst through the door, and both you and Steven visibly relaxed. You may be older than Steven, but this Gem stuff is still fairly new to you, and Greg has been dealing with it for years. He would at least be able to comfort Steven more than you could.  

“I came as fast as I could. Are you guys ok?” He asked, glancing between you and Steven. If he was surprised to see you there, his expression didn’t show it.

Greg notices the Gems lying on the table, and his eyes widen. “Holy sh...she really got everybody! Is that her?”   His gaze landed on the pink heart-shaped gem. You walked over to get a better look, now that the atmosphere was a bit less tense. The gem itself really was quite striking- multi faceted, very shiny, and very pink.  

“Yeah,” Steven answered his father.

“Who-?”

“No idea.”

“Why?!”

“No idea!” Steven sighed and sunk into the couch. You moved to sit next to him silently, wanting to offer your support, but not wanting to interject too much. “How?” Greg asked, seemingly too restricted by shock to ask more than one-worded questions.

“She hit all of us with this,” Steven answered, pulling the retracted scythe from his pocket.  

“Hey, I mean...at least it only poofed them, right?” You chimed in, giving them both a halfhearted smile.

Steven shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s all it did to them... It did something extra weird to me, my powers aren’t working right. Look at this!” He tries to summon his shield, and it blinks in and out a few times, before vanishing completely.

You furrow your brow, the pit of your stomach dropping. That’s definitely different. If it did that to Steven, what could it have done to the Gems...? Steven puts the weapon away, and puts his head in his hands. “I just have no idea what’s going on!”  

“Well son...now you know how I feel almost all the time.” You stifle a giggle- you can totally relate, and while it was an amusing comment...it makes you wonder if you might be truly in over your head here.

“Hey, guys...” You start to say, and clasp your hands in your lap, avoiding their gaze. “I’m sorry if I’m making things harder or weirder by being here. I know there’s not a whole lot I can do with what limited training I have, especially not if she reforms and tries to attack us again...” You trail off, chancing a look at Steven and Greg.  

“No, I want you here!” Steven exclaims, startling both you and Greg. “Honestly, without you I don’t know if I would have been able to get the scythe away from her. Even if it was on accident, you arrived at just the right time and distracted her for me. And you’re better at fighting than you give yourself credit for!”

“Hah...thanks, Steven,” you say, letting out a sigh. As long as he wanted you here and you weren’t getting in the way, you would stay to support your friends.  

The relaxed atmosphere didn’t last long. Surprisingly, Pearl- who, you had been told in the past, was often the last one to reform after being poofed- was the first Gem to begin glowing and floating in the air.

“Ah, good ol’ Pearl! She’ll know what to do!” Greg exclaimed, looking relieved. You were relieved as well; Pearl was your rock when things got tough in your personal life, and she always kept a level head during a crisis, for the most part. Once the other Crystal Gems reformed, they would be able to fight off the invading Gem easily. You smiled up at Pearl’s glowing Gem, waiting for her to reemerge.  

Instead, the sight that greeted you was rather...different. Instead of a glowing outline of Pearl, taking form to her normal self, a holographic oyster shone around the gem and began to speak.

“Please, identify yourself.”

“Um...Greg Universe?”

You glanced warily between Pearl and the Universes. As far as you knew, this had never happened before.   “What’s going on?” You whispered to Steven, gazing back up at Pearl’s gem.

“I’m not sure,” he murmurs, “this...isn’t normal at all.”   You gave him a sympathetic look, as Pearl continued speaking. “Greetings, Um-Greg Universe! Please state preferred customization options.”

Greg blanches, and looks to you and Steven for help. “Uh, what am I supposed to say here?”

“I don’t know,” Steven exclaims.   “This is so weird,” you mutter, still staring at the floating holo-oyster.

“Default settings selected,” the gem says, “please stand by.”  

All three of you go wide-eyed as the gem flies to the middle of the room, and finally, Pearl emerges. Except...she looks different. Well, you knew they often changed their forms after being poofed, so maybe she just wanted to try something new. Though, you had never really known her to be the puffy sleeves and skirt type...

“Pearl!” Steven exclaims, ecstatic to have his friend back. “Pearl, thank goodness you’re back!”

But Pearl says nothing to Steven, seemingly not even noticing him, or you for that matter. She only has eyes for...

“How do you do? My Um-Greg Universe? Thank you for bringing me into the world.” Pearl takes Greg’s hand, and gazes up at him with what could only be described as devotion. She kneels in front of him and continues, “I am at your eternal service! Welcome to your new Pearl.”

You look over at Steven, who is staring at Pearl and his father in shock.  

“Well,” you think, “this is certainly going to be interesting.”  

[sol1056]

S7: both here and there, pt1

The best word for S7 --- from a data standpoint --- is polarizing. 

The datasets have been pretty volatile, and that’s telling in and of itself. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the earliest Rotten Tomatoes’ score for S7, at 13%. As word spread, I’m not kidding when I say I gleefully refreshed every five minutes to watch the votes jump up another 200 or so --- while the actual score inched upwards like molasses in January.

Crowd-sourced ratings --- Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Yelp, Good Reads, Amazon, etc --- aren’t unknown quantities anymore. We know the first round of reviews, the majority of the time, will produce the highest ratings. After that, it’ll slowly drop until it reaches an equilibrium (when a few votes could no longer tip the score). A break in that established pattern --- of the low votes coming in first --- is a bad sign. Displeased viewers are more likely to just turn off; it takes shit getting real --- or  personal --- to get action from the angry ones.  

A little context: the first 200 or so votes had an average of about 1.9, which is beyond abysmal. If it’d been a 2.5 to 3.0, that’d signal dislike. 1.9 is verging on serious rage --- and every time someone put out the cry that the average wasn’t climbing fast enough, it simply drew more attention to the developing schism.

S7 now has 2758 votes, 1.4 times more than S1-S6��put together. The fandom moved at a fever pitch, and many of those calls were exhorting fans to vote a flat 5. To still only get a 3.9 average means almost 700 people gave the season the lowest possible score. That’s one-quarter of the viewing populace. One-quarter. 

Let’s hypothesize the first 250 or so votes were a single cranky group. If everyone else was generally happy to give 4s or 5s, S7 would be at 91% with a 4.2 average. Without access to the actual breakdown, the only conclusion is that there was no single negative push. The anger continued, even as a larger group tried to cloak that anger with inflated values. 

And that’s just the simplest example of polarization and volatility I’m seeing in every dataset, which is why I waited a bit longer to report in. As a warning, there is no single value to say this season was good or bad; we’re going to have to consider all the data in context before we can pass judgment. 

We’ll start with the usual datasets to get a sense of estimated viewership and audience engagement and get the broad strokes. In the follow-up I’ll get into more datasets that will round things out for a fuller picture.

an explanation about Netflix ratings

For those of you just tuning in, Netflix is a black box. They never share the specific viewership data, and even the ‘trending’ is calculated based on the viewer + other various data. (Your trending on Netflix is not automatically the same list as someone else’s.) The few times anyone’s tried to capture viewing data, naturally Netflix swears the numbers are all wrong. 

The closest we can come is Wikipedia’s page analysis, which apparently correlates to Neilson ratings. That means we’re extrapolating that we could expect the same behaviors from viewers for digital shows. These aren’t the ‘real’ viewer numbers, but that’s fine. I’m using them for comparison, after all, so what really matters is the change, not the total. 

a note about the two core datasets

The wikipedia dataset and the google dataset are essentially measuring audience engagement. The drawback is that past 90 days, google’s dataset is combined into weeks, plus it’s relative. To compare multiple seasons, I’m stuck with by-week values. I prefer wikipedia’s dataset for this finer-grained look, because I can get down to the day.

However, I’ve taken the two datasets, merged by week, and compared. They map almost exactly, with a caveat, The release-week values for wikipedia are always higher than google’s by around 5%, and the between-release lull values on google are higher than wikipedia’s by about the same. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but without actual numbers from google, eyeballing is it probably good enough for my purposes.

post-release tails comparison

A little over two weeks in, first thing is we check the tails, which are a measure of how long engagement lasts after a season’s release. There’ll be a peak, and then interest will taper off until it hits a threshold, usually the level of audience engagement in the lull between seasons. Sometimes, the tail is relatively flat and long (ie S6). In others, the tail is a bit steeper, indicating a quick drop-off (S3-S5). But it’s also a factor of how high the peak reached, in that some seasons will have farther to go (S1, S2) before reaching that lull threshold where the ‘tail’ ends.  

After S6 (yellow line) reversed the falling trend, S7 (dashed green line) is following the same path. If you were expecting a tremendous rise (or fall), you’d be disappointed; the surprise in S7 is that it has no surprises in this dataset. It’s holding the line established by S6, albeit at a higher engagement rate.

This graph takes the above, and adjusts so the peaks are equalized. Now we can see the tails in a better comparison. 

S7 wobbles in equal measure to balance out S6; the most we could say is that S7 is holding the line. It neither gained, nor lost. Because the two graphs above are daily, there’s a bit of noise. To streamline that, we’ll take the same data but gathered into weeks (Friday to following Thursday, as releases are always Friday). 

comparing the first four weeks of every season

Here we’re comparing the totals for the first week of all seven seasons, then the second week, etc. (S7′s data is incomplete for the 3rd week, so that green bar will probably increase.) 

Even here, there are some interesting details hiding in the data. Basically, the rate at which S6 built on S5 is pretty close to the rate on which S7 is building on S6. And the fact is... that’s not how multi-seasons stories usually work. 

comparing viewership peaks across seasons

As comparison, this is google’s interest over time tracker for House of Cards:

If a series is expected to go out with a bang, there's usually a spike for the final season, but all the seasons before will steadily degrade, and often by a regular percentage. A quick comparison of several multi-season, serial, shows (Orange is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Stranger Things, Daredevil, TrollHunters) seems to indicate the House of Cards pattern would be considered a successful show. Whenever it peaks, about 20% of those viewers will drop out, and after that, the numbers hold mostly steady, with perhaps a 5-10% drop at most. (Trollhunters breaks this mold with a 50% drop for S2, and a finale that almost matches its S1 peak.) 

With that in mind, let’s look at the rate of change from one point to another: the peak of season A to the peak of season B. They’re floating so you can see better how the drop from one affected the next. 

After S1, 31% of the audience dropped VLD. Of the remainder, 20% quit after S2; after S3, a further 20% didn’t come back for S4. This is where you can see S4's damage: 28% didn’t come back for S5. All told, between S1 and S5, 68% of the viewers quit the show. If VLD had been a Netflix original, S5 would have been its last season.

But thanks to marketing or hype, 17% of those lost viewers returned for S6, which in turn influenced the return of 22% more viewers for S7. None of the other shows had a mid-series rise, let alone a second increase. Viewership hasn’t caught back up to the levels after S2, though, but if I were to say any point turned around the sinking ship, it’s clearly S6.  

It’s too soon to say whether S7 will take that further, or if S7 is just holding onto the lead S6 put in place. We won’t really know that until S8.

weekly rate of change to see patterns

Some of the seasons peaked on the 2nd or 3rd day, so I started from that point; starting on the release date (with lower numbers) would camouflage that peak and defeat the purpose of this comparison. The question here is: can we see a pattern in viewership engagement over the first month after a release? 

With rate of change, the smaller the drop, the lower the difference. Frex, look at the 3rd and 4th weeks of S5. The difference between weeks 3 & 4, and weeks 4 & 5, is only 1%. That means the engagement level was dropping at a steady rate across those weeks. 

Now you can see the real damage: S4. Basically, a week after S4′s release, 78% of the audience checked out. Next to that, S5 regains a tiny bit of ground, and S6 increased that. So far, S7 is holding steady with S6. 

Again, S7 hasn’t lost ground, but it hasn’t really gained, either.

pre- and post-season context: measuring hype

What none of these graphs show, so far, is the context of each season. For that, we need to look across all the seasons. Again to reduce the noise (but not so much it’s flattened), I’ve collected days into weeks, starting on friday, ending the following thursday. The release week is marked with that season’s color.  

I know it’s kinda hard to see, here, sorry. To throw in a different dataset for a moment, here’s a simple track of all searches for ‘voltron legendary defender’ from May 2018 to now. 

This pattern echoes across several other datasets, btw. There’s a spike for S6, which never entirely drops off, and then we get a second spike for the premiere at SDCC. (Which is also the first time a between-season premiere has skyrocketed like that.) After SDCC, the base level stays high. 

In other words, does S7 appear as a larger spike because it began from a higher base rate? How do we compare season-to-season, when one starts at a radically elevated position compared to the rest?

The question became how to untangle hype from viewer reaction to the season. Here’s the viewership levels for S5, S6, and S7, again consolidated into weeks. 

After S5, things dropped pretty low. A week before S6, reviews, a trailer, and some wacky marketing hijinks lured a lot of people back in. Two things happened between S6 and S7 that are worth noting. 

The first, two weeks after S6, was the announcement that Shiro was no longer a paladin, and his link with Black had been severed. This weekly graph blurs the details slightly, but the drop you see in the next two light-gray columns actually starts the day after that announcement. 

The second gray bar is SDCC, where S7E1 premiered. In the gap between then and the week before release, the levels drop back to the new (higher) baseline. Excitement was high, propelling audience engagement. If hype is meant to increase engagement, and these datasets are capturing the same thing to some basic degree, there’s a value in what the pre-season week and post-season week could be telling us. 

the narrative in the data

If the week-prior is high, it means audiences are engaged due to pre-season marketing, trailers, rumors, and reviews. If the week-after is high, it means audiences are excited and engaging directly with the show itself. In other words, you could say week-prior measures how much people are buzzing or getting ready, and week-after measures how much they’re re-watching or encouraging others to watch.

For S1 and S2, the week-prior was really low. After S1 there was a splash in October, but not big enough to keep energy up through to S2. Both S1 and S2 had much higher week-after rates. The simplest reason would be that people who’d seen the season were now talking about it and raising buzz on their own, thus propelling further engagement. 

Until S7, S3 had the highest week-prior engagement --- and the first time there was a drop, comparatively, in the week-after. S4 follows that trend, with a much larger drop. S5′s before and after are close to equal, which to me says that whatever excitement was ginned up prior, the season didn’t have much of an impact one way or another. It feels almost apathetic, actually. 

S6 reverses the trend; people went into it barely more excited than they had been after finishing S5, but for the first time since S2, there was a post-release rise. Audiences were engaged again. Even with the drop from the post-season news, it wasn’t so far SDCC couldn’t rocket it back up again. But if you look at the graph above for S7, once again there’s a slight drop in the week-after. 

Given the level of week-prior excitement (especially with the SDCC spike still fresh in people’s minds), the lack of post-season buzz is noticeable. 

To get a better look, I’ve isolated the rate of change for each season, comparing week-prior and week-after. S1 and S2 had such extreme amounts (744% and 156% increases, respectively) that it torqued the entire graph. I’ve left them off so we can focus on S3 through S7. 

After S3, engagement dropped by 9%, indicating a less-enthused audience after seeing the season. S4 went further, dropping by 27%. S5 managed a small increase of 4%, and S6 increased engagement by 18%. 

S7 has a 2% drop. Not as bad as S3′s, but nowhere near the huge spike we should’ve seen, had the pre-season hype been borne out in the season itself. That excitement didn’t quite pop like S4; it’s more like a slow leak.  

comparing across datasets

One more thing before I wrap up this first post. Google’s data is on the left, and Wikipedia’s dataset is on the right, with the weeks marked that include the actual release date. (I did this in excel so the images don’t line up quite right, but hopefully it’s good enough to illustrate.)

With Wikipedia’s daily values added in a Fri-to-Thu week group, there’s only one week before a strong drop. With the Google calendar-style (Sun to Sat), S7′s second week goes even higher, and the drop is steep. 

In the Google numbers, 2/7ths of the green bar is ‘now showing on Netflix,’ and the remaining 5/7ths is the hype-based engagement levels. The same goes for the week following, which in google’s dataset is even higher; 5/7ths of that, plus the last 2 days of the week before, equal the S7 green bar on the Wikipedia dataset, on the right.   

And that means there was enough traffic in five days to propel an entire week to even higher than the week that contained the first two days of the season (which usually loom over all others by a noticeable degree). It’s even more remarkable when you look at the Wikipedia dataset, which is arranged to run from Friday to the following Thursday -- and which does have a drop-off. 

I’ll be tapping a few more datasets to unpack this anomaly, in my next post. I’ll warn you now, they paint a very different picture of S7. 

part 2 can be found here  

[honeythistle]

(How to) Climb Mt. Fuji

So this isn’t my usual art/crafts post, but I thought some of you guys might be interested in this if you ever go to Japan, so I’m putting together a guide regarding how our experience in climbing this mountain went, and how you can go about doing the same. Warning: this will take you 10+ minutes to read, so grab some tea first and sit somewhere comfy :) Also I was getting a bit delirious towards the end, so pardon any terrible grammar/bad humour... thanks!

My partner and I climbed Mt. Fuji this past year on September 1st & 2nd. We flew into Tokyo from Toronto, Canada on August 30th, and left ourselves a day in between to adjust between the time zones. There’s a 12-hr difference, but we didn’t need to adjust fully since we needed to wake up around 2-3 am on September 2nd anyway to catch the sunrise, and the jetlag might have actually been helpful for this.

Also, before proceeding any further, I thought it might be helpful to say that we were/are not in tip-top shape... aka we do not exercise regularly lol. And honestly, you don’t really need to be in the best shape of your life in order to climb this mountain. We saw people of all ages on our climb - the range was actually a little surprising. There were parents carrying babies on their fronts, small children who looked like they were under the age of 8, and seniors (at least a few who were over 70) who decided to try to conquer this mountain... and most of them did :) 

Quick Details

We did not hire a tour company, because it’s unnecessary. Everything can be booked in advance online, and there are plenty of English signs on the mountain. Most rest stations also had someone who spoke English at a proficient level.

We took a bus (with tickets booked in advance) from Shinjuku JR station in Tokyo to the 5th station on the Subaru line (Subaru is the name of one of the paths up the mountain).

We booked two beds at Goraikoukan, the highest rest station available

We paid for 2 meals in advance at Goraikoukan - western style dinner for the day we arrived, and Japanese style breakfast for the next day before we climbed to the summit.

We brought 10 onigiris from 7-11, a box of granola bars (6 - 8), 3 bags of chips + cookies, and just over 3.5 litres of water with us.

It was hovering just around 0 degrees Celsius on the peak, but felt a bit colder due to wind chill. 

The Journey There - from Tokyo to Fuji

We booked our bus tickets in advance using this site. As stated on the site, you should definitely book your seats in advance since lots of people use them during climbing season. Our 8:45 am bus was completely full as far as I could tell.

The only tip I have to offer here is in terms of how to get there from Shinjuku station. It took us about 30 minutes to find since the instructions from the ticket itself were not very helpful. The actual bus station is right on top of Shinjuku JR station:

All you need to do is go through the South Exit, then walk to your left after you exit the station, and when you hit the end/corner of the building, there will be a discrete elevator there that will take you to the bus station at the top of the building. Easy peasy. There’s also a yummy bakery across from the elevator that you can purchase breakfast from called Gontran Cherrier. Don’t ask me what it means... my suspicion is that it’s supposed to be french since cherrier is french for cherry, but something got lost in translation.

There are also coin lockers everywhere, and we left most of our luggage at Shinjuku station in the 3-day ones. Those are a little harder to find but are essential if you plan to spend more than one day at Fuji (basically if you want to climb it), and don’t want to pay for 2+ days having them sit in an empty hotel room.

First Stop: Subaru 5th Station

The bus we took dropped us off at Subaru 5th station around 11:15 am, and it is the most frequently used station due to how easily accessible it is from Tokyo. This station has several food options, most of which are fairly basic and pricier since it’s pretty high up the mountain already. It also has a resting area and large washrooms, as well as a bus ticket booth where we purchased our bus tickets for Kawaguchiko, Five Lakes - a popular town to go for rest and relaxation after climbing Fuji. 

As you walk towards the climbing path, you may see these horses... they’re mostly for tourists who want to ride around the 5th station. In other words, no you can’t ride a horse up Mt. Fuji.

You will also come across this big map showing you the climbing path. I took a photo of it for future reference - and we actually used it a bit on the way down, since it’s not the same as the one going up for safety reasons. There’s also a guide who will hand you a pamphlet with this map on it (albeit a lot smaller) about 10 minutes into the hike.

The Actual Climb

After a bit of relatively-flat hiking, the landscape shifts to something like this:

The incline here is maybe about 20 - 25%, and is fairly reasonable compared to what’s ahead. You just need a little stamina, and here’s where our food & water supply came into play. A little bit of munching here and there along with rest breaks ensured that we kept a steady pace and didn’t burn out. 

Some people do bullet-climbing, where they arrive later during the day and try to climb to the peak in one go. We didn’t want to do that because we didn’t know how long it would take our bodies to adjust to the thinner air near the top of the mountain, and climbing extensively in the dark just sounds like a shit experience overall.

After a couple hours, the terrain will turn much steeper and rockier, like so:

There will be some parts that require bigger steps, and may be a bit difficult for young kids/seniors. The best way to ensure your success is to make sure you leave your hands free. One senior we saw climbing below us was struggling a lot due to the fact that one of his hands held an open-top plastic bag of toiletries/supplies, and he was slight in stature so he needed both hands to help him climb. We ended up carrying the bag for him for that leg of the journey because there was no way he was going to be able to make that climb otherwise. 

The coolest part of the climb was realizing that we were coming out of the clouds. The only other time we’ve been above the clouds was when we were in an airplane, so this was a bit unreal.

There are rest stations all the way up the mountain. They’re fairly sparse at first, but will appear more frequently as you get closer to the peak. They all have washroom facilities, a small selection of food/snacks (the prices have a positive correlation to the height...), and most of them should have sleeping quarters. 

By the time we reached the 8th rest station, we were pretty pooped but still had a ways to go. We had (most likely) finished all of our onigiris and started in on the snacks, but our water levels were still good. If we did this again, we would definitely bring more food since there was still a whole 2nd day to tackle! 

Some last bits of the climb had stairs like these thankfully:

The incline here was more like 35%... You can bring/buy a walking stick, but I like to leave both hands free while climbing, and honestly they looked like a nuisance for some of the climb rather than an aid. One thing that was quite popular were these wooden walking sticks (in regular or mini versions) that you can get stamps on at each rest station as a souvenir. 

The Rest Station

As mentioned previously, we booked two beds at Goraikoukan, which is the highest rest station available. The main reason is because we wanted to minimize the climb in the wee hours of the morning on the 2nd day since it’ll be mostly done in the dark. Additionally, there are many people who make the climb during climbing season and we didn’t want to get stuck behind too many people the next morning and not be able to reach the peak in time for sunrise. We went on a Thursday, which is less busy than on weekends, and there were still a few thousand climbers there. 

The rest station itself isn’t meant to be comfortable, but we didn’t realize just how uncomfortable it could be until we arrived. The food is uneventful but totally acceptable since we were so high up. The washrooms were ok, not clean but not terribly gross either. There’s only cold water from the one tap beside the stalls, and many of the washrooms at previous rest stops didn’t have soap so make sure you bring some wet wipes to clean your hands with if you care about that kind of stuff.

All of that is totally fine, but the one thing that was ridiculously uncomfortable were the beds. You’re basically in this one giant room with bunk beds pushed right up against one another, and these bunk beds will only fit people who are 5′ 6″ or shorter. I only know this because I am exactly 5′ 6″ and it was a tight squeeze. I felt pretty terrible for my partner, who is over 6′ tall and had to sleep curled up the whole time. You are also only allotted about 2′ wide in this giant bed setup, so be ready to get really comfortable with some strangers who will be squished up right next to you, talk/snore loudly at all hours of the night and constantly push into your space because no one has any space. 

In hindsight, it might have been smarter to ask the staff for a space to sleep in the dining room on top of the tatami mats, since at least there’s no height restriction there. The one redeeming quality about all of this is that we were considerably warmer than all the people outside who either didn’t want to spend the money on a bed, didn’t book in advance for some reason, or decided to bullet climb and got there a little too early. With that in mind, I would definitely recommend booking a bed. We were tired and hungry, and I don’t think we would have had a great experience if we added being crazy-cold to that list as well.

Sunrise

We woke up the next morning around 2:30, 3-ish. Waking-up is kind of the wrong term... neither of us really fell asleep (see above for reasons why), and many other people were stirring by 2:30 and we got fed up with being uncomfortable so we decided to just go.

After a small traditional Japanese breakfast (it was pretty bad compared to dinner, not going to lie), we strapped on our headlamps and ventured outside. It looked like a couple hundred people have already decided to start climbing, and we quickly followed suit after a brief bathroom break. 

This last climb was fairly slow and uneventful since the path only allowed one person to go at a time, so there was a pretty severe bottleneck. There were a few makeshift rest stops (basically any rock that wasn’t terribly slanted... harder to find than you’d think), and I could see some people struggling with adjusting to the thinner air. The final station has a small torii gate entrance, and then a large space for people to settle down on to watch the sunrise.

This final station also has washrooms (the dirtiest of the bunch unfortunately), and a large rest station that only allows in paying patrons. Since the peak was about 0 degrees and we had stopped moving as much, I felt a bit chilly and reluctantly forked over 500 yen for a small bowl of miso soup. My partner ordered a bowl of instant ramen for 800 yen (or maybe it was 1200... at this point, does it matter?) and we dragged it out for as long as possible since there was still some time before sunrise.

The sunrise itself was a magical experience. The last time I experienced a sunrise on a mountaintop was when I was 6 or 7... and you can guess how much of that I remembered. It was at this point that we realized that there were still people on the climbing path. They had all stopped to watch the sunrise (I mean, they were still really high up above the clouds regardless) and you can see them snaking all the way down to the previous rest stop. 

After freezing my fingers off recording 20 minutes of the sunrise on my phone (learn from my mistake: bring gloves if you want to do this), we stopped in the rest station again for a bowl of 400 yen red bean soup to stop my teeth-chattering and started on the descent.

The Descent - Harder than Climbing Up (at least for me)

This might be a good place to showcase my getup:

That’s right, my getup was no getup. I wasn’t lying when I said we don’t exercise regularly. I had to buy a pair of sneakers because I didn’t own any. I also had to buy long athletic tights because I didn’t have any. I almost bought a warm athletic rain jacket because I don’t have any and didn’t want to lug around my ski jacket for the rest of the trip, but I skimped out and went with my handmade fleece giraffe hoodie instead. It was a halloween costume once upon a time, and now it has been repurposed for serious mountain business.

This did the trick for most of the climb - heck, I was wearing a mesh tshirt for about 85% of the climb since scaling mountains is a sweaty business. But I really should have layered more since 0 degrees with wind chill is no joke. 

Anyways, while my getup did the trick for the ascent, it really wasn’t adequate for the peak and descent. I picked sneakers over hiking shoes because I didn’t want to buy something I’d only wear once every couple of years, and I just wanted something as light as possible for luggage purposes. This only posed one problem: rocks were getting into my shoes literally every 10 meters on the way down. I basically had to empty my shoes at short regular intervals, which definitely slowed us down. 

You can see from the photo above that there were only lava rocks to step on. This was a serious test of your calf muscles and put a strain on your knees, since a much of the descent involved us trying not to slip and fall on these rolling rocks. Spraining your ankle was a likely scenario here, and while some people were brave enough to race down these zig-zagging slopes with their friends... we were much more cautious. 

This is also a good place to point out that sunscreen is essential! Part of being above the clouds is carrying the burden of a bottle of SPF30 (or higher, as you do) sunscreen and applying it generously.  

If you peer at the bottom of the photo above, you will see the zigzagging slopes. There were more than I cared to count. Definitely above 50, and not a washroom in sight for at least 1.5 - 2 hours. At this point we had also finished all of our food, and with no epic sunrise-over-mountain-peak to look forward to like the day before, the rest of the journey was pretty much torture. Tedious, knee-breaking torture. 

One upside though is that during one of our rest breaks, I discovered that YES, YOU CAN PLAY POKEMON GO ON FUJISAN, and I still regret not taking over a gym there :( (my phone was dying).

Finally, after making it all the way down and seeing those well-rested horses again, we hightailed it out off of Mt. Fuji and spent the next two days relaxing in Kawaguchiko. 

Takeaways/Tips/Learn from Our Mistakes

Some of the items below would only apply if you’re looking for a relatively stress-free climb and are not on a tight budget. While booking a bed for 6000 yen/person isn’t the cheap, I would definitely do it again just for the warmth alone. 

Book a place to stay - there are many rest stations available, and the next one down from Gouraikoukan isn’t more than 10-15 minutes by climbing if my memory serves me right...

Bring lots of food - this will obviously save you money. Book dinner in advance, your body will thank you when you have gone through all your provisions and you’re still hungry.

Bring ear plugs (!), wet wipes and sunscreen

ALWAYS bring pads/tampons/whatever you use if you menstruate - I got my period about halfway through our climb up, and man I was so happy to have packed my shit ‘cause there’s really nothing worse than being stuck up on a mountain with nothing but a bloody uterus

Wear gloves if you want to make cool time-lapse videos

Proper footwear might come in handy on the way down ;)

Bring a headlamp so you can see where you’re going in the dark... some people didn’t bring one and relied on other people to illuminate their path. If everyone did that, we’d be fucked.

Most importantly, don’t worry about how fast/slow you’re going. Enjoy the climb - it’s not a race :) What made my time enjoyable on the mountain was the camaraderie between everyone, and all the positive interactions we had with the other climbers. I hope this was helpful... Hello? Is there anyone who made it this far? But I would be happy to answer any serious questions if y’all have any ^_^

[last100munros]

#229 Aonach Mor and #230 Aonach Beag

Route: From the ski centre up the red mountain bike track, up the west flank to Aonach Mor, across to Aonach Beag, back to Aonach Mor, down the east flank and then down the orange mountain bike track.

Height: 1221m, 1234m

Date: 17 April 2017

Time to summit: 3h 49mins, 4h 44mins

Total time: 8h 24mins

With: Dominic Williams

Weather: Sun and cloud, tops clear, but cloud came down towards end of day, snow underfoot from ~ 900m.

Notes: Being purists we spurned the use of the gondola and set off along the mountain bike tracks from the base of the ski centre. Initially we went on wide tracks and along the blue routes which gently made their way up hill through the trees in wide zigzags, making mountain biking seem reasonably tempting. The track crossed under the gondola with a critic sign saying that there was a walking route but we couldn’t see any obvious sign of somewhere to go.

Instead we decided to go up the Nevis red route mountain bike track. This was quite good going although the potential for mountain bikers to be coming down fast did add a certain element of danger to it. The route made its way around on the the west side of Aonach Mor, and after not too long there were good views down to Fort William and down Loch Eil as well as across to Carn Mor Dearg and Ben Nevis and to Glen Roy where we’d been the previous day. Underfoot it was a mixture of track, with some large drops over chunks of granite (making mountain biking seem less tempting…) and wooden walkways. We met some mountain bikers who were coming down fairly cautiously which was fine, but then later, as we were at one of the only points where you couldn’t see the way ahead around a corner, we had so jump off the walkway out of the way of some bikers.

Eventually we made it to the level of the top of the Gondola station where there were quite a lot of people going along to the view points. Our way, however, was up. Without the benefit of the mountain bike track this was a case of picking our way up over the heathery slopes along the west side of the ski area. We stopped to eat our lunch just below the snow and then continued on, continuing to enjoy good views of Ben Nevis and Carn Mor Dearg. The snow was reasonably fresh but wasn’t too deep and was fine to walk on as we made our way up to the Aonach Mor summit plateau. If all the ski lifts were running it would be very easy to get to the top!

At the top of the slope it was an easy walk across the plateau following other people’s footsteps to the summit. From there we could see the more rocky summit of Aonach Beg, our next destination. Continuing to follow other people’s tracks we carried on, first going down to the col between the two mountains, and then beginning our ascent. We were now getting views over to the Grey Corries and the Mamors as well. Ascending Aonach Beg required a bit more care as Dom didn’t have winter kit (although he had sticks) and the snow both much icier and and on steeper, rockier slopes. I was quite glad I had winter boots on to be able to kick steps at some points. The rocks were wonderfully folded in places though.

After not too long we made it to the summit, where we took some pictures and had a snack before beginning our decent. Caution was definitely required on the icier bits but it wasn’t too bad in the end. At the col we stopped for a bit of a longer rest before going back up to the top of Aonach Mor. This time, particularly as we were planning on going down the orange mountain bike route, we took the the east side of the ski area. Coming off the plateau the cloud came down a bit, making the ski routes down the back of the mountain look particularly forbidding.

We eventually got below the snow and continued fairly steeply down on heathery, bouldery slopes until we got to the near the top of the Gondola. It was fairly late by this point, just after the last Gondola up, so we were fairly confident that we probably wouldn’t encounter any mountain bikers going down the route. It was certainly direct as a decent route, and most of the time we ended up taking the walkers route just to the side of it because there were huge drops or it was far to steep - occasionally rocks were covered with crash mats. Once in the trees we picked our way through a mixture of routes sign posted for walkers and old mountain bike tracks until we made it back down to the car park.