If you’ve been around for a while, you know that this is just so us. Maybe in 2014 we’ll finally learn that we are limited by like, time and stuff. Maybe.
– TMYK December 2013
Dear Traumateers,
Marines: Hahahahaha. Spoiler alert: that was not a thing we learned in 2014.
Our continued knack for ignoring the constraints of time meant a lot of things for this previous year, but mostly it meant a hell of a lot of blogging. 2012 was the year of figuring out what we wanted this space to be, 2013 was the year of all of the ideas and 2014? 2014 will always be remembered as the year we wrote all the things.
Sweeney: That’s also an accurate summary of our emails across the years. We had a lot of, “DID YOU SEE HOW MUCH STUFF WE PUBLISHED?” / “I KNOW, WEIRD.” / “NO BUT REALLY, LOOK AT ALL THE POSTS!” exchanges in 2014. We (and it helped that “WE” got bigger this year) wrote all the things.
Marines: And by that we mean 429 posts (compared to 350 in 2013), totaling just shy of 1,500,000 words.
Looking over these most used words, I’m surprised to see so many Buffy-centric ones sneaking in, even though we finished that series early in the year. I have to say that it’s a certain kind of satisfaction, though, to know that this will probably be the last year Spike appears in our word cloud. Other favorites include “actually” and “like” because I’m pretty sure 90% of that usage is me. Finally, it appears our favorite swear word is, “shit.”
2014:
We started the year recapping Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Supernatural and Veronica Mars.
Very early in the year, we finished the last season of Buffy, putting to rest the first TV show we ever recapped on this blog. Angel followed a month afterward and by May, Firefly was done as well.
As mentioned, this was more than anything a year of beginnings. The first thing we wanted to do in 2014 was to expand the Squad. Or really, I think when we made that a resolution, our thought was more along the lines of bringing in guests, which we certainly did when we introduced our guest recapping project, The OC. What we quickly realized was that the extra help was amazing and a lot of our friends, readers and others in our network are hilarious. We decided to capitalize on that by introducing four new Snark Ladies in 2014:
I'm a miniature adult who still gets offered the kid's coloring menu at restaurants. I like to pretend I'm an illustrator, but mostly I spend my time complaining about TV on Twitter. My life dream is to have my consciousness placed into an android body so that I'll have more time to watch/read things.
I'm a thirty-year-old postgrad living in Scotland. When I'm not writing (which, between my degree and Snark Squad, is almost never) I watch entirely too much TV, and live in constant fear of the day that I run out of things to watch.
Writer, YouTuber, musician, pretentious idiot, swarm of angry bees in a human suit. Queer in every sense of the word, and not quiet about it. Several years into a plot to take over the BBC so I can become the new Doctor Who showrunner and fix all the problems.
I'm a chronic book nerd and love storytelling in all forms. I'm particularly excited by the rise of the television show as an art form with long, cinematically beautiful plots and complex character arcs (I also watch cartoons). My travels in the past handful of years have led me through three continents and most recently landed me among the majestic mountains of Colorado. Some day I will compile all my travel journals/blogs into one place. Some day. Until then, you can find me with craft beer in hand, ready at any moment to deeply and passionately discuss survival tactics for the zombie apocalypse.
Friends, that is a lot of TV.
Sweeney: WEIRD. It’s insane to recognize that we added all of that this year. We’ve talked about this with regard to other things before – how once things become part of the fabric of the blog, we forget that they were ever introduced – and it’s strange to think that most of our regular lineup was added last year. In fact, it’s not just last year – most of those things were added in the last 4 months of the year.
Mari: Ha. I’m sure that seemed like solid decision making at the time.
Anyway, we also did a smattering of other stuff, including our most popular post of the year, Dissecting the Fifty Shades Trailer. We also took a closer look at the Mockingjay Propoganda posters, SNL’s casting drama, and though not as many as we’d hope for, we did do a few Segue Magic videos.
Most recently, I started making videos of another sort: book review videos which are living exclusively on our YouTube channel.
Sweeney: Spoiler alert: that’s a space we want to do more things with in 2015.
Mari: So, follow us now if you haven’t already. You’ll be ahead of the game.
Finally, in offline news, we had our first ever snarky meet-up when Sweeney and I travelled to Paris last year. It was magical and we’re ever thankful to Laura, Polge and Willie for coming out to spend some time with us.
Last Month:
For the second year in a row, we took two weeks off for Christmas. In fact, we’ve already decided that this will be A THING. Though we hope to (maybe)(probably) bring you something during that time, you can expect the recaps to take a break over Thanksgiving weekend and during the days between Christmas and New Years.
This year, December was extra quiet because Sweeney was relocating to Montana, where she is currently enojoying a fantastic job and trying to prove to me that winter is a thing and people choose to live in it.
Sweeney: I text her pictures of snow. I started this without really giving proper thought to the fact that there will probably be snow on the ground here for many more months. Rest assured that not thinking things through is a problem we have in the rest of our non-blog lives too.
Mari: And that’s the story of how Sweeney got stuck recapping snow. That’s different that being the Snow during recaps.
Anyway. Here’s what we managed:
On Doctor Who, Margaret of farting alien fame makes a second appearance. The Daleks show up again, this time with some sort of scheme for world domination through reality TV. We end season 1 with the Doctor sending Rose away from danger, but her looking into the TADIS to go back and save him. Finally, we rank the episodes of series 1.
On How to Get Away With Murder, we finally see who killed Sam and why.
On Gotham, assassins go after Cat and she gets to spend a day hanging out with Baby Batman.
Over on Dollhouse, everyone is a doll and probably you are too. Also, Paul saves Caroline, more or less.
In Capeside, Dawson meets a temporary stripper and it’s homecoming! Someone steals the answers to the PSAT. Everyone keeps trying to sell Jen’s kisses for “charity.” Jack ships Jen and Henry and Joey tries to protect Andy from a statutory rapist.
On Supernatural, DEAN HAS A KID AND NO ONE CAN TELL US DIFFERENT and Sam has some bad supernaturally bad luck.
In Neptune, NOTHING WAS A COINCIDENCE as season 2 came to a close.
On Charmed, the Ps use their magic for personal gain and have to see a future where Phoebe burns at the stake. And Prue has a bad wig. Prue and Piper get stuck inside a painting and when Phoebe saves them, they make a big deal about how smart she is. Piper gets a 90’s famous band to play at her new club and Phoebe defeats a demon with her hideous clothing.
In Rosewood, A leaves a message for the Liars in Hanna’s tooth. Ezra continues to be the biggest creep who ever creeped when he lies about chickpeas.
On The OC, Samantha recaps that one time Seth refused to shower because maybe Summer had sex and Catherine recaps when Summer ditches Zach at the airport after seeing a little kid playing with a horse.
Coming Up:
We stuck to very general goals when we did this last year and that worked out well. We’ve got more ideas than we know what to do with, but we want to finally learn that lesson about balancing our time. 2014 was about growing and I think 2015 will be about diversifying.
Sweeney: To elaborate a little (but only a little because we’re not being vague to be cryptic, we’re being vague because we’re still figuring it out) we’ve been doing this for a few years now. We changed quite a bit in year one, but in year two this blog became more or less what it is now. We love what it is now and we don’t want it to stop being that. We do, however, want to try new things. Hopefully it won’t be like that time your favorite band tried to expand their sound with that one weird genre blending album that you fucking hated. We’ll do our darnedest. Or, at the very least, we promise to keep doing what we’ve already been doing while we try out new stuff.
Mari: This is perfect because when we made some of those big initials changes, we compared it to your favorite TV characters going to college. I’m glad we have these pop-culture references to help us express ourselves.
At the moment, we have no plans of adding anything to our TV line-up and will be very selective about new shows in 2015. We will be adding some Snark Ladies into existing rotations. Jessica will be joining the Orphan Black recaps when they return in April and Democracy Diva will join Game of Thrones.
#snarkathon is making a come back! Unless otherwise announced, they will land on the first Saturday of every month at 8pm GMT. (Keep informed by following us on Twitter!) We’ve assigned one Snark Lady per month, and each Lady has chosen (or will choose) her movie:
February: Kirsti – Top Gun
March: Alex – Commando
April: Sam – Spice World
May: Mari – Stardust
June: Sweeney –
July: Anna –
August: Stephanie –
Sweeney: We’re still hemming and hawing in the later months. We’ll keep you updated here when we decide – and post the full roster of films in the “coming up” section each month.
Mari: You’ll see multiple Snark Ladies participating in the #snarkathon, but this way, the main responsibility for the event is shuffling around, so hooray consistency!
Tune in on February 7th as we finally snark Top Gun. Spread the word, because who doesn’t want to watch a movie alone/together?
Other projects high on our priority list are Segue Magic videos, more Snark Squad Sentiments posts, and picking up another book to snark Fifty Shades style.
2015 will mark our 1000th post and our 4 year anniversary and we hope to mark both of those occasions. Maybe just with Destiny’s Child dance parties, maybe not.
And as always, to our dear readers:
Thank you for an amazing 2014! Every time we asked if you guys would join us for another show or project, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The reason we want to do ALL THE THINGS is because we love sharing this space with you all and having these conversations. We love sharing the Feels Couch and the Shame Corner and the Liquor Cabinet… okay, maybe not that last one, but you get it.
Thank you for reading and commenting and generally adding your awesome to this site. Thank you for understanding when things got busy and we had to take breaks.
We never get tired of expressing our gratitude for letting us do what we love and making it worth it.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, TRAUMATEERS. Well wishes to you all.
♥
The Snark Squad