Dear Traumateers,
Sweeney: I cannot even begin to process where the time has gone. I had a freak out this morning when I realized that it was already July. I’m going to try not to think about it. It seems like we begin each month by talking about how busy things have been the previous month, so in that sense nothing much has changed. In June I traveled a bit and also felt constantly busy. The usual.
Lorraine: I swear to you that this whole, “WHERE DOES TIME GO?” thing comes with adulthood. I cannot remember time speeding by quite this quickly when my life consisted of sitting in classrooms and my big decisions bordered on, “which seat can I take?”
So, yeah. WTF, time?
Last Month:
Sweeney: After a long, hard road with Buffy season 4, we got a Dreams, Visions, and Premonitions crazy sundae of a finale as our reward for reaching the finish line. We simultaneously celebrated and got in one last round of complaining in our S4 wrap up post. S5 began with mixed-but-this-is-already-better-than-S4 reviews as we met the Buffyverse take on Dracula, and the most insane sibling introduction in the history of television. Xander suffered a bit in exchange for an episode that casts him in a decent light and scored him an awesome apartment that he could only acquire with the help of The Powers That Be Contriving. Spike made another failed attempt to kill Buffy, before realizing he’s in love with her. We met the evil fabulosity that is Glory and the epic fail that is Tara’s family.
Angel’s first season ended on a less crazy but similarly inconclusive and there’s-a-long-road-ahead note to Buffy’s S4 finale. We took a look at the season’s high points and low points and had a few more Doyle feels. The cast of regulars is expanding some in S2, starting with the premiere’s introduction of Lorne, a wig-free flashbacky look at Angel’s history with his new/old HQ, a better look at Gunn’s inner demons (complete with Angel in a pink motorcycle helmet!), and Darla’s demonstration of Advanced Placement Creep. Angel finally put an end to his creepy Darla dreams and Wesley got laid while impersonating Angel.
We are still reeling from the epic suckerpunch to the feels that Game of Thrones left us with. First, The Red Wedding sucked all the happiness and light from the world for the rest of forever. Then we took one final update on where all of our characters are at and disappointingly ended the season on a cringe-worthy Dany the white savior note.
Fifty Shades also ruined everything forever in a much more, “The world is actually terrible,” kind of way. Grey’s latest foray into playing CEO of Monopoly: Domestic Violence Edition focused on forcing Ana to change her name at work. Ana showed us all the great things Grey has taught her when she was senselessly rude to a woman who dared to be in the same room as Grey. Grey went to New York on business and Ana DEFIANTLY! went out for drinks with her best friend, evading another failed attack from Jack Hyde, though it’s the defiance, rather than the intruder, that caused Grey to end his trip early, so he could come home and angry with Ana.
In Rosewood, the girls wore fun homecoming dresses, and freaked out when incest-bear-accused-murderer Toby skipped town. We got an episode full of Alibacks that included a pre-blind Jenna who should have kept her sunglasses on. Spencer’s mom won a BAMF parenting award for calling Wilden out on being the most inappropriate detective ever. We even learned things, like the fact that “glamping” is an awful thing you do to your hair, and 3/3 PLL Snark Ladies are afflicted with Seth Cohen Syndrome.
We vlogged quite a bit too, albeit it with varying consistency. Our segue magic videos covered teen movies, tv vs books, and our thoughts on adaptations.
Just in case you aren’t convinced that June was an overachiever month, we also covered a Childhood Trauma book, in which Claudia got babysitting PTSD and someone should have had someone explain workman’s comp to her.
Coming Up:
We’re experiencing Game of Thrones withdrawal, but we’ve been trying to fill the void by doubling up on Pretty Little Liars. We also have a summer surprise we’re introducing in July, but it’s more fun to make you guess and wait. We can’t just give everything away here! As the wise Angelica Pickles once said: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”
Nuts & Bolts:
Minor update here: We re-did the top menu at the beginning of the month. We’re sorry for the confusion it seems to have caused some of you. As we add new material, however, it just gets harder and harder for us to keep things organized. As said as it made us to get rid of the Childhood Trauma / Ruined For Life breakdown, this has been a source of confusion for us for a while now. Childhood Trauma, of course, lives on forever as a subheading of books. We couldn’t part with our original namesake.
Lor: And just, FYI, if you click on “TV,” “Books” or “Movies,” it’ll take you to a page with all of those posts in publishing order. We hope dividing it this way and not based on a vague, “I watched it growing up, yeah?” way is better for everyone in the long run.
Sweeney: Important, useful clarification! Clicking on the main headers — TV / Books / Movies (or Childhood Trauma Books, for that matter) will give you the posts with the most recent first. Conversely, the series/season pages will give you everything in the order of that series (with S01E01 / book 1 / chapter 1 going first). Now I might have made this less clear. Sorry. What Lor said.
Welcome, Questionable New Friends:
Among the Buffy quotes, Christian Grey Popsicle, and — more importantly — “is Christian Grey a rapist?” (YES.) searches, we had a lot of the inventive and disturbing porn searches: “your mom’s 1st butt plug.” Allow me to formally uninvite that searcher. You, questionable stranger, are not invited. I’ll have Willow perform the spell shortly. We met the adorable searcher who asked “who dies in the game of thrones books” (LOL EVERYONE. SORRY SWEETHEART) who is, indeed, welcome. I think my personal favorite is the person who searched for “they can’t all be winners kid” and landed on us. Welp. That’s awkward, but welcome!
As always, thank you for sticking with us through another month, and for being patient when occasionally (all right, often) didn’t quite go up on time. We love you dearly.
Stay snarky.
♥
The Snark Squad