Dear Traumateers,
Lorraine: This month I’ve loved noticing how the site continues to grow. Not only in numbers, but in style and in the way each series has its own personality. I mean this from my own perspective, as these “The More You Know” posts are for updating you all on the website and, in small part, on Snark Lady lives. I’m not sure I’m making sense, but let me break it down this way:
Game of Thrones posts are a challenge, mostly due to how amazing the quality of the show is. Also because it’s a commercial-less hour of television. One GoT recap (the first draft before any commenting or editing) can easily take me four hours to write, double of any other posts on the site.
Sweeney: This is also a weird one for both of us, as we’re not entirely comfortable being on this side of the well-in-the-book-it’s-like-this conversation. I’m excited to see how this series changes for us once we’re recapping as it airs.
Lor: Buffy the Vampire Slayer posts are plain fun. I enjoy watching, I enjoy recapping and I love the 3-recapper format on these immensely. Each of us sees things slightly differently. Also, the comments tend to be so interactive. Buffy recap days are spent in comment notification heaven. A+ to you all.
Sweeney: And for days and days after that, too. But yeah, this is far and away the most active/engaged comment section, and it adds so much more to the experience.
Lor: Fifty Shades posts are complicated. The finished results are always my favorite posts, hands down. The commenters are brilliant and often the funniest things come out of the comments section. But, yeah, I hate the book. The 20 minutes I spend reading any given chapter is a 20 minutes spent with heart burn and tears.
Sweeney: It’s a weird balance to hate the source material so intensely and love the outcome almost equally as much. IT’S A ROLLER COASTER OF EMOTIONS, GUYS.
Lor: I guess what I’m getting at is that while February was personally a pretty weird month, one in which there were ruts and struggles and not enough thesis writing (Sweeney) or not enough time spent studying (me) or not enough personal progress in general, Snark Squad continued to move forward; it continued to be a wonderful distraction from real life.
Sweeney: Real life? What?
Lor: I don’t really know. I heard about it once.
Best of all, dearest readers, I am so excited for what’s coming up next.
Sweeney: I think you’re just excited to be the one withholding spoilers now.
Lor: What? No. Never.
Last Month:
We finished season one of Game of Thrones. That’s more of a “short season” thing but we like to focus on the “we finished something!” part. In Westeros, no one listened to our advice and Lady Cat captured Tyrion Lannister. Ned gets speared through the leg, thanks to this kidnapping business, but also a horse dies. Again. Across the Narrow Sea, someone finally shut Viserys the eff up by way of hot gold to the head. King Robert dies drunk, which is fitting, and Cersei quickly names Douche Prince Joffrey king. Ned gets into major dramz for objecting. With their father captured, Arya goes on the run and Robb gathers his bannermen. In unrelated news, Kahl Drogo rips a guy’s tongue out and gets wounded in the process. NED DIES. Kahl Drogo dies, but on the bright side: DRAGONS.
Over in Sunnydale, the first post of February was The Zeppo. I feel like this explains a lot and also, I’m still not over it. Faith’s trip to the dark side started when she accidentally killed a man. She didn’t do an awesome job of hiding the body and tried to blame Buffy for the murder. Vamp!Willow poofed into town and we spent the post declaring our love for this episode. Now firmly on the dark side, Faith thinks she’s de-souled Angel and captured Buffy but it was a huge PSYCHE! worthy of the 90’s. Jonathan acquired some context and Willow gets captured by Faith and the Mayor, but it ends with a little more knowledge and an adorable tackle hug.
Finally, in Fifty Shades Darker, the Ghosts of Submissives Past threatens Ana with a gun, so she offers her tea. Christian Grey reveals his big secret and it turns out to be that he likes to hit girls that look alike. Ana spends a chapter not doing work and pissing her boss off. But her boss is a jerk who tries to take advantage of her, and Ana kicks him in the balls.
Nuts and Bolts:
Lor: This announcement is a little late, but we changed the look of the site! By that I mean, “Sweeney did it all!” She sent me an awesome survey a few months back about branding, and it had questions like, “if your website were a color, what color would it be?” I can’t remember all of my answers but I do remember being all, “Snark Squad is definitely blue.” And she made it bluer.
Sweeney: I was going to say other things about this, but that pretty much sums it up. THERE MIGHT BE MORE CHANGES COMING. By which I mean, “I have other things in my head, but I might be too lazy to ever do anything about it.” It’s a struggle.
In other Nuts & Bolts news, we’ve been more active with our Tumblr. Right now we’re mostly going through the gifs from our vlog posts, but we posted some Stalker Boyfriend Valentine’s Day cards, and the strobelight eyes gif. Basically, it’s bite-sized versions of this blog and you should follow us if you’re on Tumblr. If you’re not on Tumblr, it’s probably because you’re not secretly 14 like us, and that’s fine too. But not really. Get on Tumblr. Follow us.
Coming Up:
Lor: A LOT, but since Sweeney and I just talked about it last night via Facebook chat, I’m having a hard time trying to tell you specifically what. I’ll leave it all very vague for now but will officially announce that we will bringing you Angel the Series coverage starting this month! I want to say they’ll be much shorter recaps, but only if you guys promise not to point and laugh if we can’t actually keep them short. Cool? Cool.
Sweeney: See, you totally love spoiler hoarding.
Lor: OKAY. IT’S TRUE.
Sweeney: Also, you know that even though we’re probably never going to succeed at our “keep it short” mission, we’re also never going to stop trying and promising that as a thing. It’s who we are.
Welcome Questionable New Friends:
On that note, here’s our strange search term of the month:
“high deficiency images of virgin fucking”
I can’t even.
In second place, I’m including this phrase not only because it was questionable, but because it led to our site 37 TIMES! Usually these weird ones are one offs, but 37 TIMES: snarksquad tampon.
I wonder if we could market that.
♥
The Snark Squad