Dear Traumateers,
Lorraine: Hunkering back down into our pre-holiday-craziness schedule has been a challenge. We’ve gotten a little better in the last week or so, but we’ve yet to give you a full week of posts since the new year started. Sorry, but also, life is hard.
Sweeney: This is your monthly update that yes, indeed, life is still hard and we are still daydreaming about our magical future in which we quit our jobs and become full time Snark Ladies.
Lor: We aren’t there yet. Instead, we’ve got Snark Ladies all across the busy spectrum, from studying for the bar to doing two people’s job for the price of one. (That would be me. Tears.) We appreciate you sticking with us and going with the flow. As we mentioned in our last TMYK, we’ve got big hopes and dreams for 2014, though we figure it’ll just take a little time to gain some traction. And stop spending so much time emotional eating. (That would be me again.)
Last Month:
We’ll start off in space, where the crew of Serenity rob a hospital, though Jayne does his best to sell them out. Mal threatens him in mid-air with an opening hatch, but ultimately forgives him. It’s a good thing too, because Jayne and the rest of the crew rescue Mal and Wash in a big way when they are kidnapped and tortured.
In Sunnydale, Spike goes around killing people, but this time it’s not his fault because he’s a sleeper agent for the First. Even though Andrew killed Jonathan, it wasn’t enough blood, so the First used Spike to release a really old vampire. The First makes its presence known by showing up as different dead people, and possessing Willow while she magics. In the end, Buffy is very beat up, but she delivers one badass speech. Most of the Potentials don’t actually have faith in Buffy, so she puts on a bit of a show for them as she kills the OG Vamp. Dawn thinks she’s a Potential for a hot minute, but when it turns out she isn’t, Xander gives her a beautiful speech, everyman to everywoman. Kennedy skips Potential training in order to trick Willow into a date, and a goodnight kiss makes Willow look like Warren. Plus, Spike’s chips starts exploding his brain or something and Buffy decides to unchip him. The main action gets a time out as Buffy goes out on a date with Principal Wood, who turns out to be a slayer’s son. Xander goes out with Ashanti. LOL. Not so funny is the Slayer origin story. Andrew decides he wants to capture the Slayer story, but in the end it’s confronting his own story that helps close the evil seal on the Hellmouth.
Over in LA, Angel was pissed at Cordelia since she had sex with his son, and in the midst of that they have to fight zombie lawyers. Gwen comes back to help the Gang stop the Beast from putting out the sun, but it doesn’t work. Since they know Angelus once met the Beast they bring him back, and we get an entire episode made up of the Perfect Happiness Dream that presumably makes it possible. Angelus messes with every member of the Fang Gang, and when they decide it’s time to put the soul back in the vampire, they find that said soul is missing. Turns out, Cordelia is evil and she tricks the Gang into letting Angelus out of his cave and also kills Lilah. Wesley decides to bring in the big guns and FAITH! breaks out of jail. In the end, though, it’s Angelus who kills the Beast and brings back the sun. Angelus spends the next episode talking a lot, and Faith has a hard time finding her will to fight.
We finally made it out of season 2 on Pretty Little Liars. The girls finally discovered that Mona was A, only to also quickly discover she wasn’t really the only A. To celebrate the end, and highlight just how much nothing they packed into a season, we recapped the entire season in Tweet-lengthed sentences. Season 3 starts a few months later, with Emily getting so drunk, she’s some how placed in front of Alison’s open grave with a shovel. A new A threatens the Liars with damning photo evidence. Next, A hits the girls with threatening jewelry, some of which they manage to actually flush down a toilet.
Things get kind of scary while recapping Supernatural as a demon tries to kill off people who survived a plane crash it caused. Then things get even scarier when Bloody Mary makes an appearance and she looks like the girl from The Ring.
It’s Homecoming time at Neptune High, and Veronica flashbacks to homecoming last year with Duncan, Lilly, and Logan. Troy gets Veronica to help him locate his stolen car which wasn’t actually stolen because he’s a lying liar who lies.
Sweeney dusted off the good old Snark Squad Sentiments feature and weighed in on the Variety article about SNL and “Diversity Done Wrong.”
Lorraine reviewed her first YA book of the year, Laurie Halse Anderson’s, “The Impossible Knife of Memory,” and gave it a B+.
Our second #snarkathon was an over all win, though no one who ever watched I Know Who Killed Me could ever call that movie a success.
Coming Up
The end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I was going to qualify that with a, “barring any natural or personal disasters,” but I think all us Snark Ladies are pretty committed to finishing this project. I’d blog mid-hurricane, is what I’m saying.
Sweeney: You’ll notice it’s the series that has most managed to stay on schedule. We send each other STICK TO THE PLAN emails, including pictures of calendars. We mean business.
Lor: The calendar emails are my favorite.
We started these recaps in July of 2012, so thinking about the end of it inspires all sorts of emotions. We hope you’ll join us as we not only finish the series, but also celebrate the end with a few special features, including some ranking posts and a special #snarkathon scheduled for March 8th where we’re going to watch the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.
Sweeney: AKA the best #snarkathon yet.
Additionally, we’re going to continue to do screwy things with the Buffyverse schedule to account for crossover magic. Blame Joss Whedon.
We dropped Angel and doubled-down on Buffy in order to align Faith’s LA/Sunnydale transition. This week we’re continuing as normal — Buffy & Angel (19/17) on Monday and again (20/18) on Thursday. Next week, however, there will be no Buffy posts. We’re doing four Buffyverse recaps as normal, but with the added bonus of our season wrap-up for Angel. In order to make a fun week of it, that means we’re doing one post each day (rather than two on Monday and two on Thursday). The final two Buffy posts will go up the following Monday and Thursday.
If that sounds confusing, I repeat: blame Joss Whedon.
Nuts & Bolts:
After sitting here and thinking about this next section for a long time, I think the best way to address this topic is to be to be direct and frank: Something happened in the comments recently where we asked a person to stop commenting on our posts. It was probably the toughest decision Sweeney and I have ever made regarding this website, because of two reasons: (1) – We aren’t into exclusion and (2) – We didn’t want that decision to negatively impact any other Traumateers.
Sweeney: Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was something we had revisited and discussed at great lengths for quite some time before pulling the trigger. (Or, rather, pushing the block button.)
Lor: It’s important to us that you know that the decision wasn’t made lightly and that we were patient for a long time, probably well past our usual threshold. It reached a point, however, where this thing we do for fun and for free carried with it an air of dread because of the way we were being addressed. It had nothing to do with differing opinions, and everything to do with respect for other people and their personal and private lives. To clarify: we are here to discuss material, not to insult people. If someone’s comments become insulting, we will feel it our duty to address them.
We love comments. Truly, interaction with other people who love (or hate) the things we love (or hate) is why we do what we do. We don’t expect everyone on the Internet to agree with us, and in fact, some of the best and most interesting conversations come as a result of differing opinions. Your opinions are welcome here.
That all said, we can’t bring up a topic like this without of course acknowledging how wonderful you all are. You make us laugh and think and do so with lots of class and style and most importantly with lots of respect. We’re here to have fun, after all, and at the end of the day, you and I and are the real people. The shows we watch are fiction.
Sweeney: We love you all to bits and pieces. Thank you for riding out all this crazy with us.
♥
The Snark Squad