Month: February 2021

Stitch in Teen Vogue: Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia” Plays Oppression Olympics — But Nobody Wins

Stitch

Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia is a messy show with a first half that’s packed full to the brim with racist microaggressions — and that wouldn’t be a bad thing if the show actually engaged with most of them.

What Ginny & Georgia gets right: the mother-daughter relationship, dealing with trauma (poorly, as a person), how tough it is to be the new girl in town, the MYSTERIES.

What Ginny & Georgia gets wrong: the racism. It literally does not know how to handle the thing it manages to build most of its series around.

If you saw the video of Hunter and Ginny’s exchange going across Twitter and were uncomfortable with the nonsense on display, check out my article to see how this is just part of a pattern across the series.

And then come shout with me.

Fandom Racism 101: Basic Body Politics

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I love a tol and a smol and if you’re in fandom… chances are that you do too.

There’s something supremely thrilling about size differences in a pairing. I know people who’ve gotten into their ship of choice specifically because of the huge height difference between the pairings. Hell, I got into Devilish Joy specifically because the lead pairing has almost a foot difference in height between them when she’s not in heels. Even before you get into macro/micro content, a lot of fandoms and different internet subcultures are pretty positive towards size differences and body differences.

Now, what does that have to do with fandom racism?

Plenty.

Unfortunately.

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A List of Things I Disliked About Infinity War and Endgame… In No Particular Order

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP2w_UAK6B4

As you all know, I am largely on social media hiatus. As a result, I have been making use of the Disney+ membership I got Meems so she could watch Wandavision. (Which is very good but Wanda is whitewashed – to an extent, it feels like the wrong word here but I don’t know what fits – in the casting and that’s not going away any time soon.) Anyway, in watching all of the MCU movies except the Spider-Man ones as they don’t seem to be on the platform, I have come to experience a deep loathing for Infinity War and Endgame.

So now, instead of doing literally anything else I am supposed to be doing, I bring you… a list of loathing.

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Fan Service #3 – On Racebending and Seeing Yourself in Fandom

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Fandom is all about community. We come to fandom because of things we love and connect with other people who love the things that we love for the same reasons we do. There’s a post going viral on Tumblr that says “a fandom can just be you and the ten people you haven’t blocked yet”, and while that’s definitely true and I’m a huge fan of curating your online spaces, fandom also brings together people from around the world who thought they were alone in their uniqueness. Fandom brings people together based on what made them stand out in their offline and online lives.

In my latest Fan Service column for Teen Vogue, I got downright celebratory! We’re talking about seeing yourself in fandom and how fans have made fandom a place where they can see themselves – give or take a few issues of representation that do crop up.

Please feel free to share the link with interested folks as I can’t hype it up on Twitter the way I usually would since I’m still locked on main because of harassment over the last column (and my general existence, they really don’t like that)!

Anyway: I’m looking forward to continuing to bring y’all quality commentary on media and fandom in March’s installments of Fan Service!

I hope y’all enjoy this one!

Music Video Anatomy #8 – WA$$UP (와썹)

Stitch

Missed what I’ve been doing with Music Video Anatomy? For the most recent installments, I covered Jay Park’s 몸매 (MOMMAE) and Taeyang’s  MA GIRL! This time though, we’re looking at a girl group that probably should’ve quit before they got started… the since disbanded WA$$UP.

Title:  WA$$UP (와썹)

Artist: :WA$$UP

Setting:

The main setting of WA$$UP’s debut video is a basketball court in the middle of a city – I’m honestly still not sure if this was filmed in Korea or in the United States, actually. It’s an unsubtle callback to the origins of hip hop and teenagers coming up with rhymes while playing around in their neighborhoods. (Think of the kind of setting early in Netflix’s Roxanne Roxanne!)

There’s also a dark alley where one of the members does her own spin on ghost riding next to a very expensive car that I would be worried about crashing. I don’t think it adds anything to the music video, but it’s just… funny to me.

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Why Does The MCU Do That With Their Villains?

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(Please don’t take this too seriously. I beg of you.)

I’m watching Age of Ultron as I write today and I need y’all to understand that this movie is really just keeping me going because James Spader as Ultron is unfortunately My Thing. But what this movie makes me think of – aside from how bad Whedon’s writing is from start to finish – is how the MCU often frames the reasonable negative backlash to the Avengers and the superpowered US Military Interventionalism they represent as The Ultimate Villainy.

In Age of Ultron, there are murals and graffiti in Sokovia that are against the Avengers and US intervention on their behalf. Because Hydra (who are Nazis, not even Nazi coded or inspired like the Empire or First Order in Star Wars) are the folks spurring the backlash to the Avengers, the hatred is framed as irrational and evil –

But at the end of the day: no one wants US interventionism except those that profit from it.

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like: All The Pieces of Heroes of Color

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“[…] this problem of cannibalizing a hero of color to enhance a white character isn’t new.” – tumblr user thehollowprince in response to a tumblr message received July 16, 2020 (Archive link.)

I’ve never seen folks in fandom cut up aspects of a white hero to then give those characteristics to another white character. No one’s writing stories where Bucky was always Captain America and he went on to link up with the Avengers as a fandom norm. No one’s rewriting the Skywalker saga so that Luke is actually the (totally unrelated) rogue who falls in love with Leia while Han is shot into the icy vacuum of space.

White heroes are never stripped of their backstories, motivations, and the like to boost a minor white character or villain up to heroic status. The things that make heroes like Captain America, Luke Skywalker, or even Batman relatable are never stripped from them and handed to some other white hero. (And yes, that’s two superhero franchises and Star Wars, but I get to do that.)

What I have seen are plenty of instances where a hero of color has the things that make them unique in in their media not just stripped away, but then given to white characters in their show, film or comic franchise.

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Thor: Ragnarok and Being Grateful for “Taika’s” Loki

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So I’m watching Thor: Ragnarok, since I have to do something while I work now that Twitter is currently not an option for me and… I really love this film. It’s fun, it’s weird, and it’s something that does not actually require a lot of effort on my part to engage with. 

Beyond that, however, I was reminded of how ridiculous the hate for this film was from die-hard Loki stans who missed that this was actually some of the best treatment Loki’d gotten since the first Thor film. 

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Link Lineup – February 2021

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Some of the great things I read between last time… and this time! Feel free to pop what you’ve been reading into the comments so I can catch up with your cool thing too – especially if you literally wrote them!

How MF DOOM Saved a Generation of Lost Hip-Hop Fans

DOOM was a worldbuilder, and he was committed to that practice as much as anyone else in music. For me, Mm..Food? was the gateway to an entire universe. His flawless collaborative album with producer Madlib, 2004’s Madvillainy, is an endless array of non sequiturs, multilayered lyrics with hidden meanings, and more of the villain persona, all spat over jazz-inspired production. “Fancy Clown” is the embodiment of the DOOM experience: a narrative about DOOM stealing the girlfriend of a guy named Viktor Vaughn. The catch: He rhymes from Vaughn’s POV. DOOM even released two albums under the alias Viktor Vaughn, a more down-to-earth version of the comic supervillian’s character. (Dr. Doom’s real name was Victor Von Doom.)

This article is just… so good. I didn’t know that much about DOOM before he passed away and my life is poorer for it. DOOM seems to have been the sort of hip hop nerd that I would’ve done well to know as a kid. He was brilliant, skilled, and nerdy on main with a bit that did not quit. I loved this piece so so much because he was someone my older siblings probably grew up listening to and now I do feel like I can understand part of their own journeys through hip hop a bit better.

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[Stitch Talks Ish] Season 2/Episode 1: Stitch Talks Ish… With Morg

Stitch

Transcript

[Coming Monday…]

Three Things About The Negative Backlash to Fan Service #2

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I have been harassed for writing about racism in fandom spaces since 2017.

Before, people had one off “lol that’s d*mb” and “fandom isn’t racist” responses, but it wasn’t until people started taking me seriously that the harassment amped up to the point where I found myself leaving Tumblr as a result. Sustained direct harassment – insults, impersonations, aggressive pushback, dogpiling, brigading and lying – have marked a large amount of my time in fandom since 2017.

It started with white dude slash shippers when I talked about the laser focus on Hux/Kylo and other white dude slash ships at the direct expense of characters of color in their media. Then Rey/Kylo shippers got in on it when I pointed out how their early Ben Solo characterization was given Finn’s backstory and interactions with Rey. Then people who identify as “proshippers” in and out of the Hannibal fandom and various anime fandoms that I’m also not in got in on the game.

And that’s what it is to them: a game.

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a letter to the world, a friend, and to everyone else

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You probably don’t know me.  What I do for Stitch’s Media Mix, and Stitch, is largely unseen.  I don’t engage in fandom the same way Stitch does— or for that matter the way most of you do— I tend to more actively interact with news and sports than I do with fiction, and I really enjoy avoiding fan spaces. 

But I have known Stitch for over a decade.  I know who they are as a person and who they are as an author, and who they are as a fan.  I know the work Stitch puts in to every article that gets published on here, on Patreon, in Teen Vogue.  And I believe in the work she’s doing.  It’s VITAL that we actively think about, and actively engage in critiquing the entertainment we consume.  If we cannot critique our entertainment, if we cannot place it in the large context of our society (both how it is informed by society and how society informs what we find entertaining) then we are not doing everything we can to make a better society. 

And Stitch has chosen to not just apply critical analysis to fiction and to music, and to the reactions of the fans. She has chosen to take this really incredibly dense academic concept and make it accessible, both in terms of how it’s written (trust me, every single article Stitch writes could be SO MUCH more dense) but also how and where you have access to it.

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Fan Service #2 @ Teen Vogue: On Fanfiction, Fandom, and Why Criticism Is Healthy

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Head on over to Teen Vogue to read my latest Fan Service installment “On Fanfiction, Fandom, and Why Criticism Is Healthy” where I look at the ways that fandom’s instinctive pushback against criticism affects fans in fandom – not just external critics who maybe don’t “get” nuances of fandom cultures.

It’s not censorship or bullying to point out that there are issues in different fandom spaces that require some updated approaches. For example: “Don’t Like, Don’t Read” and “Your Kink Is Not My Kink” are phrases used in fandom to let people know that they should take care of themselves by not reading content they find objectionable based on a matter of different taste. But neither of those phrases are good responses when fans come up against bigotry in fanworks. Telling someone to “just ignore” transmisogyny, ableism, or open antiblackness in fanfiction isn’t just unhelpful; it’s unkind.

I love critique as a mode of expression and meta fandom works are among my favorite outside of well… literally anything to do with Omegaverse. February’s first column was born out of a deep desire to get people thinking critically about why fandom isn’t down with criticism even from people inside of it. Not every critique of fandom is in bad faith or an attempt at censorship/controlling the average fan and assuming they all are – especially when marginalized people are talking about things in fandom that harm us on purpose or accidentally – isn’t a good way to go about things.

Anyway, please go check out the latest installment of Fan Service and feel free to share the piece with interested friends and fans!

On Fanfiction, Fandom, and Why Criticism Is Healthy

😀

[Guest Post] Alison the Beloved (Part One)

Stitch

The Black companions in the rebooted iteration of Doctor Who have it rough, especially the women. 

Think of Martha, who suffers Simm Master’s mockery and his enforced servitude of her family in Season 3’s Sound of Drums. Think of Bill, who endures a decade of medical abuse and slow Cyber conversion (i.e., being made into a cyborg) at the hands of Razor Master in Season 10’s World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls. Think of Grace, who dies of electrocution and fall after defending the Thirteenth Doctor from a gathering coil in Season 11’s Woman Who Fell to Earth. The New Who’s Black companions are generally treated as more disposable and less important than the white characters.

But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if New Who’s first companion had been a young Black woman — cherished, celebrated, integral to the narrative? How might the experiences of Black companions be different if Alison Cheney had been the first?

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