Pornokitsch: That was 2014...
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Our annual look into the mirror. Not that this is any way about narcissism. No. This is about the historical record and perserving valuable data and uh. Whatever. US. ALL ABOUT US.
By the numbers:
Total posts: 348
Books reviewed: 97 (excludes Friday Fives, Post-Scripts and list posts)
TV shows, films and comics reviewed: 60 (also excludes Friday Fives, Post-Scripts and lists)
Eerily, although the total number of things reviewed is almost identical as 2013, the proportion of book/non-book reviews has changed in favour of the latter. That's due to Anne, Jon and Mahvesh. And Jared slacking.
Friday Fives:
We had a whopping 47 Friday Fives, which is pretty badass, and leaves us room for 5 weeks of improvement in 2014. A huge thanks to everyone that participated.
If you're interested in taking part next year, here are the guidelines.
Fiction:
This was our first year of publishing fiction on the site. We've already analysed the hell out of this here, and a complete list of all the stories can be found here.
Original: 8 (thanks to Jesse Bullington, Molly Tanzer, Rose Biggin, Amy Coombe, James Smythe, Adam Roberts, Kim Curran, David Bryher and Archie Black!)
Contemporary Reprint (2000+): 22
Classic Reprint (Pre-2000): 19
Non-Fiction: 12
Total: 61
We'll be opening up submissions in the spring.
Guests:
Not as many as previous years (unless, of course, you count the 47 Friday Fives and 61 pieces of fiction and non-fiction), but still awesome.
We're delighted that Jon, Mahvesh, David and Molly have since (rather foolishly) joined us as regular contributors.
"Most Popular" Posts:
Well, normally we'd do a "Most Popular Posts of the Year" list, but someone (eep) who really likes to fiddle with the site's code (double eep) accidentally deleted our analytics plug-in. So apparently (triple eep) that's not going to happen this year.
That said, our most popular post of all time was this year - Anne's "We Are Sansa", which, last time I checked (October?!) had accounted for over a quarter of the year's total traffic. Wowsers.
In the absence of official metrics, here are ten of our favourite - and possibly the weirdest - moments from 2014:
"Hatchet Jobs and the Bad Review Syndrome" by Sarah Lotz (February)
The annual DGLA reviews (April - June)
"Poking at Awards: What does success look like?" (April)
"Crossing Over: Crisis on Infinite Earths" (May)
"Game of Thrones Season 4" ... not really a 'review', per se (July)
"We Are Sansa" (August)
"15 Marvellous Meats, aka THE MEAT DRAFT" with Mark Charan Newton (August)
"The Metallurgy of Action Heroes" (August)
The Big Book Drop with the Book Smugglers (September) [471 books!]
"Thunder in Our Hearts: The Music of Kate Bush" (October)
Whew.
Most important of all:
Thank you. Thank you very, very much for sticking with us for another year. We love talking about, hosting, chatting, arguing and otherwise bullshitting about the stuff we, er, love. And we especially love that you take part in it with us. And that's a lot of use of the word "love". Before this goes full Hallmark - thanks again, have a fantastic New Year, and we look forward to having more fun together in 2015!