Stitch’s Media Mix is ten years old!

Gross! I hate it!

I’d waffled about posting anything for this since I’ve basically stopped updating the site across the past few years. But actually… my site is still here, and I guess that counts for something.

I originally put this site together because I wanted to write for Book Riot and, at the time, they wanted more presence than social media for their authors. I feel like, somewhere in the depths of my inbox, is a very polite rejection that explicitly says they wanted writers with a website and that Tumblr didn’t count. Hilariously, even after all of that effort, I never wound up writing for them. I kind of… forgot that I had ever wanted to write for them in the process of building my own site and trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to say.

In the past decade, I have said a lot. I have done a lot. I may not have written for Book Riot, but I’ve written for a lot of different publications until burning out and (basically) staying that way after my dad died in late 2022. I’ve been in fandom studies publications, on podcasts that I was not running, and have spoken to several of my favorite celebrities. (And maybe a few of yours!) In the past decade, I built decent relationships with so many brilliant people and learned as much as I tried to teach.

Did you know that there were people who were in middle or high school when they started reading my posts on Tumblr and who now are in college or working in publishing or communications where they try to make a difference? I feel so old when someone messages me and is like “I used to read your site when I was in high school” and now they’re like in their late 20s.

Disgusting. (I say this very fondly. I just detest being reminded that I’m aging.)

Every so often I spiral and I tell myself that nothing I’ve done matters. Fandom is so much more racist than it was when I started writing about it. It’s more racist than when I saw people promptly make memes about Steve!Cap calling Nick Fury the n-word in like 2012. How is that even possible? It must be my fault, I sometimes tell myself. My work on pinpointing racism (and specifically antiblackness) and my refusal to coddle unintelligent racists in queer and feminist fandom must be why fandom is more racist. Not the fact that niche fandom spaces are “at best” neutral about white supremacist behavior and at worst… full of people who actively defend racists because they’re valued more than Black and brown people in fandom spaces.

But then I’ll see someone – most recently in the fandom for Netflix’s Arcane – link to one of my articles about misogynoir or something and I’ll go “wait… I’m actually not the problem here”.

In hindsight, sure, there are always better ways for me to have handled things that pissed me off or people that were being racist. Obviously. The late 2019-early 2020 hyperfixation on Rey/Kylo shippers actively slandering John Boyega as a sex pest wasn’t pretty. I can look back at that and cringe a little bit even if I was and will remain correct.

But in the end, am I actually worse for fandom than racists writing RPF about John Boyega having steroid-atrophied testicles because he made a joke about Finn and Rey getting together in an Instagram comment? Am I actually worse for fandom than people who will defend racists’ right to create racist content but who will try to isolate POC talking about racism even in their friend groups? Am I worse for fandom than TERFs who make alt accounts and lurk in discord servers so they can have their cake (erotic content about trans characters) and eat it too (mock and harass the very people who are creating the content they jork it to)?

I think not.

For sure, I’m not worse for fandom than that weird CaitVi fan who beat the shit out of the Mel Medarda Funko Pop she got after knowingly preordering the Cait one despite supply chain issues… and then posted it on TikTok. Or the people writing racist fan fiction specifically because they get a kick out of people of color being angry at them… only to be called “antis” for it by reactionary weirdos with no sense in their heads. I’m definitely not worse for fandom than discourse accounts that pretend to care about racism in fandom but only… in the shallowest ways while defending/running cover for vicious racists in their group/s.

Transformative fandom – which people insist is a uniquely safe space for queer fans and progressive, feminist fans – is more racist than it has any business being in 2025. We are going backwards, as people openly complain about “wokeness”, stalk fans of color until they leave fandom, and call Black fans all kinds of names for pointing out/talking about racism.

Despite hyper-positive, anti-critical perspectives that seek to frame this space as utopic and wholly positive except for “outsiders” and “antis”, when it comes to race and racism? Fandom is only a utopia in the way Omelas is a utopia. Fandom is willing to sacrifice Black people for its happiness and a pretense that all is well under the surface, only to be surprised when some weirdo fash wiggles their way in or a Fandom Elder starts saying stuff in line with the current admin’s perspectives.

And whenever I spiral – which happens a bit less than it used to – what brings me back to a sense of balance is remembering that there are people who aren’t sticking their heads in the sand and seeking escapism. It’s seeing the people of color in fandom who are currently trying to reclaim their seat in the shared space of fandom. The Black women fighting for Mel and Ambessa in Arcane fandom when folks come for them on some goofy misogynoir. The Sam Wilson fans who refuse to let weirdos in the MCU fandom swallow Sam’s narrative up for Bucky or Steve. The teenagers and younger adults of color that I’m seeing in newer incarnations of proship spaces who are perverts that refuse to accept racism as the price they pay for sick (in both meanings of the word) content.

Even when I’m not cited – and I do not think I need to be in fandom unless it’s from fan studies scholars who should know better – I can feel… some kind of impact from my work. People are still talking about the ways queer and feminist fandom is racist and exclusionary. They’re still talking about ways to stay balanced and active in fandom despite people going out of their way to tell them fandom is for white people only. They’re still trying to write and read what they love and to make fandom a better place.

It is so incredibly egotistical of me to say that any of this is because of me. I know. Hell, I owe my own site to NK Jemisin, Mikki Kendall, teland and countless other older Black people in fandom spaces who spoke up when shit smelled. But I view these fans I’m watching now and have been watching for a few years as the next generation of a big family tree, the newest markers in a Black fan genealogy.

And it feels kind of… good to be a part of this.

I cannot say that I will ever write for this site – or any other – the way that I did during grad school or early on in COVID. Too much has happened to make this really… difficult to justify burning myself out on or risking my physical safety and mental/physical wellbeing. And currently, since I’m struggling to find full time work outside of journalism and some kind of help with focusing, I also just… do not have the time or energy to write the way I used to.

But as long as I’m alive – and hopefully even after that – this site will remain up as a reminder that fandom is imperfect and antiblack in a way that needs to be addressed. As long as fandom mistreats Black fans and gets weird about Black characters or celebrities, I’ll be here like a version of Darkwing Duck that swears and snarks.

Thank you all so much for being here with me and caring about making fandom a little bit better for fans of color in any way that you can.

xoxo

stitch

PS. If you’d like to support me in the endless struggle of my existence, my Patreon is still a thing (I’m super behind for March because not having work for the month sapped my energy entirely but catchup is possible) and I do have a Ko-fi. You can find those links and others – including Pages & Prejudice, the podcast I do with my dear friend Adrie – on my LinkTree. I’m also super open to being a nepo hire if someone wants to throw a job at me that does not require me to do a journalism. Because I really don’t want to do that any more. Gonna be real!