Month: November 2020

Award Eligibility 2020

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As always, I’m only eligible to be nominated for awards related to fan writing (because my fiction writing is… sporadic and also super NSFW when I do post it). If you were so inclined to nominate me for something – like the Hugo Award for Fan Writer or any similar award – here’s what you could nominate me for!

I’m a fan writer because I’m a fan writing about fandom – maybe not fandoms you think about on the regular, but spaces that need coverage that strays from solely celebratory. My writing primarily focuses on queerness and/or race in media/fandom spaces and I document and push back at established narratives about the supposed progressive spaces and what fandom is actually like when you’re in the thick of it.

As of this point in 2020, I posted 101 pieces on my site for a total of 185,232k words. These pieces covered antiblackness in transformative fandom, Korean pop/hip hop fandom, how a popular Tor release missed the mood of 2020, music reviews, the Star Wars fandom’s endless awfulness… and so much more. I uploaded a handful of videos to my YouTube channel, recorded and posted like nine podcast episodes, wrote for I-D and Teen Vogue, and pissed a lot of racists off in fandom just for pointing out the facts of fandom.

2020 has been tough, but I have put out some of my best work so far despite all the wild shit I’ve been through and it’d be cool if folks recognized that, you know?

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Music Video Anatomy #4 – NUNU NANA

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Last installment, we dove into BTS’ debut single “No More Dream“!

Title: 눈누난나 (NUNU NANA)

Artist: Jessi

Setting:

The main recognizable settings for “Nunu Nana” are a restaurant kitchen doing double duty as a gambling den, what looks like a loading dock behind a set of shops with plenty of room for a red convertible to serve as the main focus, a building under construction and used for money laundering, and a music show stage.

The car itself is a really notable set piece for me because you have three moments where It’s a huge hip hop focus: in the beginning where Jessi’s on the car and a dancer is throwing her back out in front of it, where Jessi is twerking on it after washing the hood, and then the end when she and Hyori are hanging around and in it.

It feels like calling back to video vixen visuals only Jessi is, across the video, both the star the vixen dances for and the vixen herself and while that could be good… with Jessi, it’s… just kind of funny to me.

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When Transformative Fandom Passes The Buck On Representation In Fandom

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“Well if there were more well-written characters of color, I’d focus on them,” is a recurring excuse for the way content is unfairly weighted towards white characters in Western media fandoms.

I have heard it used for over a decade and it’s an excuse used to successfully argue that the thing stopping them from caring about Black/brown people in their shows is… quality and quantity.

Back when we were hearing the first rumblings of rumors for Pacific Rim Uprising’s John Boyega connection, my friend Holly over at DiverseHighFantasy posted on Tumblr that:

The PacRim fandom is already chanting for no romance in 2, but wait till they see whiteguy Jaeger Tech #3 and whiteguy cafeteria server in a 2 second shot together.

The post on Tumblr currently has over fourteen thousand notes and considering how from the jump people were insulting Holly, accusing her of “a homophobic microaggression”, saying “let women like things”… .it probably hasn’t gotten much better. From John Boyega’s interviews and how he talked about why he wanted to be a producer – this film was his production company’s first outing – we knew that the film was going to probably have a diverse cast of characters.

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Link Lineup – November BONUS

Stitch

Everyone’s writing such good content and I can’t actually bring myself to wait until December to share some of the stuff I’ve read since the last Link Lineup post! So bonus links for all!

The Business of Selling White Women the Righteousness of Their Own Anger

After all, it was a white woman feigning outrage (that she later admitted was a lie) that killed Emmet Till in the first place. But while white readers ordered so many books about white privilege during the summer of Black Lives Matter protests over the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor that they created a shortage, the majority of books about women’s anger often depict all women’s anger as being equal, a force for good and never a tool used to silence and punish others; they largely ignore the slew of white women having meltdowns at the sight of non-white people having barbeques, enjoying swimming pools, or birdwatching that abound on the internet. Perhaps that’s because the idea that white women’s anger is, has been, and continues to be a source of terror for a lot of marginalized people is simply not something white women, even “good” white women who marched for Floyd and Taylor, are particularly interested in buying.

I think it’s been interesting how I have constantly been accused of anger – when I am at best mildly annoyed and deeply inconvenienced – by white people who are angry that I exist and that I write what I do.

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Music Video Anatomy #3 – No More Dream

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Did you catch the first two installments of my Music Video Anatomy series last month? I covered Epik High’s epic ode to hating the haters “Born Hater” and the H1GHR Music collab for the TELÉFONO Remix!

Title: No More Dream

Artist: BTS

Setting:

There are a couple main settings for No More Dream. At points across the video they’re on a school bus. At others, they’re in an alley in front of it. At the start of the video, they get off the school bus into skatepark with a skatepark with a quaint neighborhood theme and then a skatepark with classroom… themes.

One thing I like noting within Music Video Anatomy is when a hip hop video doesn’t go with expected settings. With “No More Dream” you can tell that there’s a goal for there to be some clear hip hop connection but then, as you can see on the Behind the Screen site’s entry on the No More Dream music video, there are a lot of nods to what’s basically alt culture that isn’t related to hip hop in the US? Which is pretty cool.

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Urban Fantasy 101: Stitch Reads The Hollows – Dead Witch Walking Chapters 26-30

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When we last left the lovely losers in Dead Witch Walking, Rachel was bleeding out and a demon sent her back to the church she lives at with Ivy and Jenks. As Rachel is literally moments away from dying, of course Ivy and Nick feel the need to get into a pissing match over her. 

Ivy’s all “how could you let her get hurt, I knew I couldn’t trust you” (which… is valid) while Nick is a smug fuck that’s like “You’re not her mom and also you’re totally trying to hunt her. I’m gonna tell her”. 

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What’s Real About Hip-Hop Anywhere?

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Across Hanguk Hip Hop, Myoung-Sun Song seeks to answer several pressing questions about Korean hip hop – made by and for Koreans in Korea for the most part – and one of the ones that has stuck with me is simple, but pointed:

What is real or original about Hanguk hip hop? (6)

It’s a question that I’ve never been able to let go of as I listen to Korean artists, read translated interviews they’ve done, and watched a really large amount of music videos and live performances from a wide range of Korean artists. 

It’s a question that has no real easy answer to me.

Why?

Because, if you watch Korean hip hop music videos or even the idol rappers work with their groups or forays into solo work, a lot of it sounds and looks like the stuff I’d be able to listen to on MTV or BET if they still played music videos. A ton of it looks like stuff I listened to in my teens. 

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[Stitch Answers Feedback] How Are You Mad About RaceFail 09 Coverage in 2020?

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Just now (like at 9:49PM) I got a comment moderation email from D_Moze’s comment on Why White Supremacy Can No Longer Provide Cover for White Academics by Robin Anne Reid that read:

I was there for Racefail ’09 and every word you say is a filthy lie. Racefail was a couple of grifters and anklebiting anonymous trolls attacking established authors with false accusations of racism, and people like you — people who’ve never contributed a thing but hatred — made bank off of it. Shame on you.

And I since I don’t want to have Robin subject to replying to this nonsense – and I didn’t approve the comment anyway – I decided to take one for the team and reply briefly to this “feedback” so you could see that you were seen… and found frustrating.

D_Moze… In case you missed it, we are in the middle of a pandemic, seeing racist upheaval everywhere, the US still doesn’t have another president called officially, and some of us are poor because of a bunch of those things.

I can’t believe that this is what you decided to do with your time!

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Link Lineup – November 2020

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I’ve been extremely online across October and I’m happy to say that the internet has not let me down. So I bring y’all some of the best content I’ve found across the internet between October and now!

the return of the pleasure activist

in every single aspect of life, seeking the pleasure in it makes it so much more possible for me to be deeply present in the world and sense what is needed.

now, it has become a politic for me…living not just to the point of survival, but to the point of pleasure. i am certain that pleasure is the missing piece in our movement(s) for a new world.

The first time I heard of someone calling themselves a “pleasure activist”, they were a Rey/Kylo shipper claiming that being a pleasure activist is why they’re so invested in Kylo (“if i center my pleasure on characters who i believe can and should be redeemed then that’s a manifestation of how i hope our world can heal thru pleasure”). So of course, I was kind of a dick about it because I am… kind of a dick about so many things related to Rey/Kylo shippers.

Thankfully, one of my darling social media buddies set me on the right path and showed me what pleasure activism was actually all about. Beyond what that moomoo up there said, the idea of pleasure activism actually does work for me. It’s more aligned with the theorists and thinkers I’ve been consumed by since college than anything else.

And it does not actually support focusing on the redemption of a white man as pleasure activism. That’s not how that works. (But then, that day was when someone compared not wanting a Kylo redemption arc to supporting the carceral state so… that fandom is NOT okay.)

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[Image Post + Essay] On Performative Anti-Racism

Stitch

Originally posted on Patreon July 29, 2020

Source: On Korean Artists Using Their Platforms to Say that Black Lives Matter

If you’re on social media, I’m sure you’ve seen people show their support of Black Lives Matter as a movement while making it clear that they don’t give a damn about Black people in “their” spaces. 

The folks in fandom with #BLM in their bios or in their display names who tweet snide and shitty things about Black people in their fandoms. The folks who use their – or their celebrity or political favorite’s – donation to charity to say that they care more about Black people than… Black people do. Fans, businesses, and celebrities known for literally making Black people stress out from how they talk about us all were performing anti-racism and professing to be ready to unlearn antiblackness.

Even SM Entertainment got into the swing of things when they released a statement in June about how they were “new to the conversation” (despite hiring Black people to dance, write, record demos, etc for them for decades). 

But it’s all been incredibly performative.

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[Stitch Talks Ish] Episode 8B: Map of the Soul ON:E – Day Two Reaction

Stitch

Transcript

0:01
So, we’re on episode 8B of Stitch Talks Ish. This is the second part of my virtual concert experience, recapping the second night of BTS’s Map of the Soul ON:E performance. If you were unsure, this is the concert that effectively takes the place of the concert I was supposed to see in May.

0:27
Heartbreaking, isn’t it? We’ve all lost lots of opportunities across this pandemic and not getting to see a concert sucks, but it’s not the worst thing that could have happened, or that even has actually happened, to me and my family— so far.

0:43
But, it was another really great night of paying attention to BTS, and kind of checking out of what was going on in the world around me. So, if you’re ready for another post concert recap, here’s the recording I made right after the concert ended on the 12th. I believe, no, the 11th of October.

1:47 -[musical interlude]

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