#rachel HASN'T MADE AN ACTUAL POST ABOUT THIS ANNOUNCEMENT

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Lore Olympus will be officially ending in 2024.

While this is vague both in Rachel's responses (as always) and the actual specific timeline, considering this is the final 'arc' and most of Rachel's arcs rarely go any longer than 12-15 episodes, I have the sneaking suspicion she's going to try to wrap this up by March/April. That's just a prediction, mind you, it could just as well go on throughout the entire year of 2024.

That said, it's wild to see it finally confirmed, like a weight has finally been lifted of our shoulders. Many of us have been speculating on it for a while now that LO would undoubtedly get dragged out as it's Webtoon's golden goose and clearly Rachel's lifeline to the industry.

Lore Olympus has been a part of my life since 2019, and an even larger part of it in the last year and a half when I joined the critical community. It's going to be weird to live in a world where LO just doesn't update.

Of course, as mentioned in the article, there's still the matter of the physical books which are still FAR behind the webtoon version, and the TV show which they swear is still happening (but we all know it's not happening lmao).

So I don't think this will be the end of WT milking it for all its worth, but I am interested to see what happens to WT when they don't have their golden goose on a leash and chain anymore. They've sunk so much money and priority ad space into LO that even other Originals creators can't stand the comic due to how much its undercut their own opportunities. I'm hoping this will be a wake-up call to WT to give more attention to their series that are struggling and deserve to be seen, rather than focus all of their attention into one series that's barely got a pulse to speak of.

Of course, I'm sure people are wondering, "What about the fandom communities? What about antiLO/ULO?"

Listen, this isn't the first fandom I've taken part in, though it's certainly the one I've been the most directly active in with the essays I write and the stuff I do through Rekindled.

But if being in fandoms has taught me anything, it's that it doesn't matter how long a series has been gone. If there are people who still love it - or love to hate it - taking part in discussion, that discussion will continue to thrive. A series existing in hindsight is just as much a reason for participation as an active series existing in the present day. If anything, a series falling into the realm of 'hindsight' can give us the room we need to sit and reflect on what the series actually did, and what we were left with in the end. It's never stopped the folks who still talk about long-ago-completed series like The Office, House M.D., and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

So if you're new to the LO critical community, or asking yourself if it's still going to be "worth it" to take part in the fandom after LO is done - it's as worth it as you make it. There will always be something worth discussing in this fandom if we're wanting to discuss it.

As for me, well... I'm just getting started.

#also i just wanna add that they did NOT do a good job at announcing this #rachel HASN'T MADE AN ACTUAL POST ABOUT THIS ANNOUNCEMENT #AND HER OFFICIAL GROUPS ARE STILL SHUT DOWN #WHY ARE FANS HAVING TO HEAR THIS NEWS FROM THE ANTI'S LOL #just for effectiveness' sake and i don't usually do this but #lore olympus #because the fans deserve to know this is the final arc #lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus

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I've been seeing you say/speculate Rachel Smythe has been cut loose from webtoon, could you elaborate what you mean by that?

It's only a tinfoil hat theory that people should take with MOUNTAINS of salt (seriously, I'm more likely to believe that Rachel really is just done with LO), but there's a general suspicion that LO wasn't meant to end here and that Webtoons decided to cut the cord. I've made a post about it before but some new stuff has surfaced since then.

1.) The announcement the series was ending was made quietly at NYCC and not shared to either Webtoons' socials or Rachel's socials.

The only way fans initially knew about the series ending was through a screencap from the Discord where someone else who had been attending NYCC passed on the info from a Q&A that LO would be entering its final arc.

For a good while the only other way to know the series was ending was through the Discord, a Cosmopolitan article, and my own post.

Though it sounds odd for a series to get cancelled halfway through its third season, it's not uncommon for Webtoons to suddenly axe series while they're on their midseason hiatuses, it's happened before. So there's a general suspicion that Rachel may have found out during NYCC that LO would only be given one more arc.

2.) The actual finale announcement was made in a text post on Instagram that suddenly announced it would be ending on May 11th, despite the fact that there was still lots to wrap up in the story.

What this implies is that Rachel was given one more arc, with no concrete end date... until Webtoons told her to wrap it up in a limited number of episodes, hence why despite us knowing it was in its final arc, the end date still felt too soon. This is also supported by the fact that her initial announcement was vaguely "early/mid 2024" - she couldn't give a more accurate end date because she didn't plan for the actual ending.

3.) Things that Rachel has said implies that she was either hoping for the final arc to go on longer, or that she didn't think LO was going to be ending now.

(that "nothing is set in stone" quote further supports the theory that she may have been hoping to get renewed in spite of the lukewarm ending announcement - that the only reason the announcement was so quiet was because WT hadn't fully committed to it yet and wanted to see how the series would do upon its return; now that they see it falling behind to other series, it might mean WT became more sure in their decision to cut it and gave her an actual deadline to wrap it up by.)

4.) Webtoons has stopped promoting Lore Olympus despite it ending.

Any promotional spots that it has gotten have been stuffed into the dead zone of the banner reels (seriously, anything past the 3rd spot is practically useless because it takes actual committed scrolling to get there vs. the first 1-3 banner spots which can be seen as soon as you open the app/site) and the banner art itself does not in any way advertise the series being in its final arc. These banners also only seem to be appearing for a day at most, compared to the days upwards of weeks they used to get.

Webtoons also hasn't been doing any sort of promoting on their socials for it. Considering The Mafia Nanny has been consistently beating out LO in the top rankings for weeks now, and that LO's rating and view count is still dropping, it appears that Webtoons has finally given up on shoving it down people's throats and put their focus elsewhere.

Again, this is all tinfoil hat speculation, so take it with massive doses of salt. Considering this is Webtoons, I wouldn't be surprised if they finally decided to put LO out of its misery, but this is also Rachel and I wouldn't blame her in the slightest if she finally wanted to be done with it after the past two years of people clowning on it. And I say that knowing I, myself, am a clown LOL

Either way, I feel like either outcome is plausible in its own ways, but whatever is the true reason, it doesn't change the fact that LO is ending and has 3 episodes left to wrap itself up. And whatever comes after will likely involve the launch of Inklore which was estimated for the spring.

#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #lo critical #anon ask me anything #anon ama #ama #ask me anything

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I've been a bit of a salty spitoon over the recent events unfolding at NYCC so here's some GOOD news (sorta) >:00

I say (sorta) because I'm not a huge fan of mongie's work (or mongie herself) either, but DAMN if this lady doesn't know how to GET SHIT DONE-

Like GODDAMN is there a lot to show for here \(￣︶￣*\)

I don't know what the Let's Play After Dark or Omnibus works are, but it's really cool to see Linda Sejic's art here, I had NO idea what to expect when mongie announced she was going to NYCC and collaborating with Linda. I'm assuming Omnibus is likely a novelization or some kind of complimentary book to Let's Play because it has over 700 pages of stuff which is wild. Unless they just went and re-skinned the Volume 1 cover of Let's Play, I have no clue but it looks great. As for After Dark, yeah, again, no clue LMAO

Let's Play is returning in 2025, AND she's starting up a new series over on Manta (a publishing platform that's open to NSFW material which will definitely be better for mongie's work and will hopefully give WT a run for their money LOL) She hasn't stated yet where Let's Play's new home will be, but I'm assuming if it's not Manta, it might be a new independently-run site altogether, but again, we'll just have to wait and see. I remember her mentioning she wanted to do a fantasy series on her Patreon ages ago so it seems like she's finally getting the opportunity to do so. I have no idea what she's going to do with Let's Play after its S3 jump the shark finale LMAO

She's getting some merch made with BIOWORLD which is neat, though it'll be interesting to see how the quality comes out because the last creator I saw working with BIOWORLD was Smythe and the merch was uhhhh- not great. I posted about it on IG a while back but I don't know if I ever talked about it here so I'll def make that as a separate post for anyone who's curious.

But the BIG one - Let's Play is getting an anime, and it's from an actual animation studio which is a way bigger sign that it's a sure thing.

Again, I'm not a huge fan anymore of Let's Play or mongie in general, but I gotta give her credit where credit is due, she had WAY more to show for herself at NYCC than Rachel did, and the fact that she did all this after burning her bridges with WT, that's gotta sting for WT's and Rachel who still don't have anything to show for an animated TV show after four years. At this rate, there are gonna be more creators succeeding on a mass scale by choosing not to publish with Webtoons than those who did.

And who knows, maybe the anime adaption will tidy up all the problems original Let's Play had. It remains to be seen, but I think it's pretty neat to see mongie making such strides since she left the platform.

Something something, "I don't care if mongie wins, I just want Webtoons to lose" 😂

#tho again mongie has a lot of issues herself oof #that said she's still probably one of the least problematic out of rachel and snailords #that doesn't make her NOT problematic but you def don't see her ambushing fan groups or scamming her audience #she's got business sense and i'll give her that #now let's see if she can stick the landing >:0 #webtoon critical #lore olympus critical #let's play webtoon