#i mean sure i'm excited

[a-s-levynn]

Uhh.. today is so slow..

[egophiliac]

just thinking about hair and faces

[aquanutart]

She is offering water to any lost travelers! However, it's so hot that the water has become tea, so she's adjusted accordingly!

[spoozly]

The h

[felassan]

.

[sysig]

Ellen McLain’s commentary from my trivia playthrough

[ladyluscinia]

I know my last experience with a season ending on a note everyone hated and unanimously tore to fucking shreds for destroying the story on every level was... atypical. Lockdown. 6 month mass hysteria at minimum. Conspiracy theories that were, like, real things we had on camera. There was a Twitter wedding. Creative fervor that broke 100k fics on AO3.

Like. I know this is not a rational point of comparison and I'm not going to expect anything in my lifetime to match it 🤣

But.

If that was the highest high of post-season fandom engagement built on a cocktail of tasting everything you ever wanted AND the absolutely lethal levels of spite and swearing to eat showrunners' hearts in the marketplace, then whatever the fuck is going on after OFMD S2 is the opposite of that.

OFMD S1 was a huge fandom explosion. One silly little streaming show that had a gay kiss and then it skyrocketed. Fic numbers were soaring, high activity fic and meta engagement lasted for at least four months, it was constantly trending and flooding the dash... Like, fucking hell, over a year and a half after the immediate finale fervor it beat Stucky in the top ships bracket?!? To the point I was willing to give it what felt like due credit toward its potential as a future juggernaut ship. Not guaranteed, of course, but the potential was there.

In that context, new content should be a blow out party. Which it kinda was pulling off as it was airing, but looking back now? Not even quite a month later?

The effect of S2 on the fandom is like... a blip. Possibly over already.

New fic numbers started dropping off the moment the finale aired and have returned to deep hiatus levels. It's dropped off trending and streaming leaderboards... I'm very curious to see the first tumblr Week in Review since the finale, though we're still waiting due to the holiday.

Like, I've even popped on to scroll a few Izzy hater blogs that I know loved the finale out of morbid curiosity what they were up to, and I'm telling you... if I hadn't just watched the new season I'd think they were still over a year into hiatus. Saw some standard bitching about the izcourse / Edward takes (aka the one thing that kept them going all hiatus), they're currently passing around posts mocking one specific long OFMD version of TJLC I'm just hearing of, the same BTS gifsets everyone else is thrilled by... But barely any new meta or discussions. There's like 2 people posting actual analysis of S2 that's getting reblogged and they aren't even names I recognize from the hiatus. Nor is it particularly interesting to read. 🤷‍♀️

In July of 2022 I could pop onto a random OFMD blog and scroll through a dozen enthusiastic Stede or BlackBonnet metas about jacket colors or that moth from 1x07 or lighthouse symbolism or whatever. Now the new stuff has the same energy as posts from June 2023. It's borderline dead. And this is what it's like when there's an active campaign to engage fandom and Renew as a Crew?

(I will say fanartists are bringing some energy and there's some lovely pieces being passed around, which I do think the Renew as a Crew campaign is helping to boost?)

Even the hundreds of people saying it was a beautiful season and they loved it so much don't seem to be finding it a very engaging or inspiring season.

It's such a turn, like, what the fuck.

[tracle0]

Feast your eyes! My pride stars :)!

[sebdoeswords]

Finished the first season of Tsurune and MAN that shit was good. I think what I love about sports anime (especially non-mainstream sports) is that they deal with the quintessentially human practice of pouring your whole heart into something and loving something so much you could burst

[20001541]

they released the full soundtrack of season 7 of the anime and this one is called The Demon Lord, which is obviously afo's :) it sounds so good, only the best for our demon king

[humanmorph]

HUGE w for rosa "more than anything else I want Austin to do a vignette episode again" "maybe palisade maybe this time" humanmorph. WIN!

[b4kuch1n]

I actually for real feel like my phone's scanning quality has dropped monumentally while I was away on thing so that's a fun thing to figure out now. anyways

[subtle-as-an-earthquake]

sometimes i think about penny turner and how much she must love her brilliant, beautiful son, her only child, and how proud she must be of him, but how much she must've worried about him too over the years (and probably still does sometimes) and then i cry a little 🥺

gif credit @ihatealexturner [X]

more emo thoughts about this under the cut because it's just that kind of night i suppose

like, we know alex and his mum (both his parents actually) have a great relationship and they love each other very much, so i have no doubt that she's so very proud of alex for how hard he works and how driven and talented he is, so proud of everything he's achieved, knowing how much he and his creations mean to a huge number of people

but then also, how could she not worry about him, knowing that yes, he is living his dream, but he's also flying all across the world every few years, a different city every night, performing to the point of exhaustion, only to have to come up with the next big thing all over again? that's a lot of pressure on his shoulders, even if he does share a lot of it with the rest of the band. and alex handles it admirably of course, but still, if even i worry about him sometimes, i can't imagine how it must be for his mother (and father, of course, all of this probably goes for him just as much)

i also think about how she must have felt when alex moved to the usa, and how relieved she must've been when he decided to move back to the uk/europe, to have him closer again. and i wonder how she must've felt watching all those different personas and eras he created appear and disappear, maybe sometimes fearing he'd lose himself somewhere along the way, but still always seeing her boy underneath it all. i'm sure she's gotten used to it to some extent, but it must still be overwhelming sometimes, seeing all the hype and the scrutiny and the expectations and the temptations he has to deal with, especially knowing better than anyone how special and sensitive he is deep down. i can imagine she wishes she could protect him while at the same time knowing he's a big boy now, and he was always destined to make his mark on the world in a way that required him to spread his wings and leave the warm nest she'd created for him

and then i think she must also be so grateful to know that he's always got his best friends with him when he's on the road, to support him and share the load, and that he has so many more friends who adore him and always have his back, and how much of a reassurance that must be and then I just 😭😭😭😭 you know? 🥺

[chuckling-chemist]

I am trying to think very hard about the mystery in Only Murders in the Building, but unfortunately I ship Theobel and this episode confirms they've been hanging out a lot and she's learning ASL to properly talk to him and that is Doing Things to me

[quailxcrossing]

maybe i didnt need to worry about anything, maybe i just had to make the comic

[electrozeistyking]

so has anyone talking about this yet, or... cuz it was in that latest news video on the amazing digital circus. and uh... i took a screenshot of it.