Author: Stitch

Stitch writes about what needs to be written.

The Great Big Anita Blake Reread: Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake #10)

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This cover s from the 2009 French edition of the novel Narcissus in Chains and is from Laurell K Hamilton’s website.

I’m still hoping the ardeur is temporary.

The last installment, I told y’all to make sure that you had alcohol ready because we were getting into the really stressful parts of the Anita Blake series. While it’s not as rough as I expected, it’s still something that drove me to crave a drink or two.

Narcissus in Chains is the tenth book in Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and the start of what I view as the downward slide of the series’ trajectory.

Set some six months after Obsidian Butterfly, Anita has finally decided that she’s ready to restart things with Richard and Jean-Claude so that their power base isn’t left vulnerable. She makes this decision right around the time that a mysterious shapeshifter starts targeting the people in the various packs that she has sworn to protect. Which is great timing considering the power boost that they all get as a result of her return.

While the official blurb for the book makes it sound like a dark mystery and a battle for Anita’s very soul are bound up in the novel (“Nothing can save Anita from a twist of fate that draws her ever closer to the brink of humanity–to finally surrender to the bloodlust, the beast, and the desire transforming her body and consuming her soul.”), the actual book is… way more boring than you’d think.Read More »

[Guest Post] Why White Supremacy Can No Longer Provide Cover for White Academics by Robin Anne Reid

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Note: This is the write-up of Robin Anne Reid’s segment in the roundup on race and racism in fandom that we had at PCA 2019 April 17, 2019.

Why White Supremacy Can No Longer Provide Cover for White Academics

The main point I want to make for this discussion is that Academia, in general, is having its own versions of Racefail ’09 in various disciplinary spaces and conferences. I am working on a book about Racefail ’09, and the more I work on describing and documenting the events of a decade ago, the more I see how current academic imbroglios follow a similar pattern, one that fits Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s definition of color-blind or unconscious, racism.

When academics of colors who, in the same way that Avalon’s Willow pointed out racist tropes in fantasy and sf during Racefail ‘09, point out systemic racism in academic disciplines, specifically, Medieval Studies, Classical Studies, and Anglo-Saxon Studies, they are met with claims from white liberals whose dominant response is “I’m not racist.”

The problems include programming at the major conferences, statements made, and actions taken by tenured white scholars in positions of relative privilege, against tenure-track scholars. The academic Racefail I am most familiar with involved doxing, death threats, and attempts to drive scholars of color out of the profession and was recently covered in the New York Times.Read More »

It’s a HAUL!

Stitch

Several weeks ago, Tiny T and I spent an hour going over Wish.com and Aliexpress looking for cute and cheap things just to experiment with the platforms. Here are some of the results!

[Pitch The Stitch] What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Antiblackness in K-Pop Fandom and Industry

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Pitch the stitch - kpop fandom and industry antiblackness

In case you’ve missed it, I’m doing a project for my website on anti-Blackness in K-pop fandom spaces and why the industry’s understanding and appropriation of Blackness/Black culture for the aesthetics of it all partially fuel the problem.

It’s already a massive project, but I want to make even more work for myself by opening up for guest posts related to the series I mentioned writing over on Patreon.

While of course, anyone can send me a pitch and I’m open to anything, I want to center the voices of other Black fans and Korean fans across their diaspora who’ve talked about the genre/industry’s relationship with (anti?) Blackness across this project.

If you’re interested in doing a guest post at any point in this project – about your relationship with K-pop as a Black fan or how you engage with the reality of the fandom or industry’s anti-Blackness as a Black and/or Korean person in these spaces – here’s your chance. I’d like to open up my platform and my site to you!

I’m looking for:

  • 5 guest posts (for the time being, i’d eventually like to post as many as 10 essays/guest posts)
  • 600-1000 words each (i won’t say no to longer posts, but I feel like that works best for what I can pay)
  • posts can be celebratory OR critical when it comes to talking about your experiences as fans

While I can’t pay a ton because I’m poor and money’s tight, THESE ARE FOR PAID GUEST POSTS @ $40 a post!

This is my first attempt at doing this kind of organized guest post set-up so please, don’t let this flop!

🙂

You can find the Google form here.

Finn, Reskinned

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Originally Posted On Patreon: February 12, 2019

Finn_Reskinned.png

Quote Source: Who the heck is Ben Solo?

Fandom’s Ben Solo is just a reskinned Finn.

There, I said it.

Actually, I’ve been saying it for years and so have many other people in the Star Wars fandom who have seen the way that fandom claims to love Kylo as a villain while the majority of the fandom writes/treats him like a reskinned version of Finn.

I’m not surprised though.

Fandom has long been a space where “good” characters of color – like Scott McCall (Teen Wolf), Finn (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), or Sam Wilson (Captain America: Winter Soldier) – are always either brushed off for being “too boring” or vilified for their goodness.Read More »

Stitch Does Stuff In June 2019

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Stitch does stuff in june 2019

I actually finished most of my catch up events in May!

I did that while struggling to find a work-life balance.

Yes, I still have my job. It’s been a hard month and I’m definitely not sleeping or eating enough, but I’m still employed. I’ve still got two more months of probation to go before I can feel confident in my long-term (ish) career goals so I’m honestly going to be SUPER ANXIOUS about things until then.

But I enjoy my job, I like my bosses (no lie, I’m not kissing ass in case they find my site), and marketing has always been a career path I was curious about. I’m looking forward to devoting a reasonable amount of time to this job and having it lead to a career that I can be secure in!

My main goals for June involve developing a work-life-writing balance, responding in a timely fashion to emails for work and not for work, and figure out my hustle. I also want to figure out time management and work with friends to keep ourselves accountable as we work on our own projects!

I’m feeling pretty jazzed about this!

So let’s look at what June will bring us!

What I’m Into In June

Books: Stephanie Ahn’s Bloodbath, Abigail Barnette’s The Boyfriend, Dal Yong Jin’s New Korean Wave, Nalini Singh’s Wolf Rain, and Kim Suk-Young’s K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance

Music: BTS’s Map of the Soul: Persona, this playlist of Korean Rappers, Dolly Parton’s Jolene, the soundtrack for Hamilton

Shows: Absolute Boyfriend, Love O2O (again)

Movies: Aquaman, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse,

Food: chicken rice, Publix subs, salmon

Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Problem With Preferences

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problem with preference

Back when Captain America: Winter Soldier first came out in 2014, I noticed something… strange about many members of the MCU fandom and how they would talk about Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson. Many of them honestly saw no shame in how they treated Sam Wilson as if he was the first Black character they’d ever engaged with.

Not only did some people (sorry scifigrl47, but I’m incapable of letting go of this) go above and beyond to posit that it’d make “more” sense for Sam to be a member of Hydra than Tony Stark at a time when Marvel wasn’t trying to make Hydra an equal opportunity employer for all marginalized people –

But you had folks who literally made and shared posts that outright said things along the vein of “[Sam Wilson] is the first time I’ve ever been attracted to a Black man before.”

No one should feel that comfortable with expressing their racist preference thatthey were outright comfortable with confessing that a Black actor in 2014 is the first time they realized that Black people could be attractive.

(Especially not Anthony Mackie who is honestly only “alright” in the looks department.)

The thing is that the word “preference” allows folks in fandom to feel as though they’re just expressing their totally neutral preference for white male characters above everyone else when they’re practically playing into literal centuries of sexual racism and the complicated politics of desire and race.

Preference isn’t neutral.

Neither is whiteness.

In 2019, it’s time we sat down and accepted that fandom’s overwhelming preference for white male characters in and out of slash ships/fandom isn’t neutral.Read More »

Fleeting Frustrations 6.5: “We Can’t Have Anything, Can We?”

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Fleeting Frustrations 6.5_ “We Can’t Have Anything, Can We_”.png

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is the focus for the cover story for Vanity Fair’s Summer 2019 issue and readers were “blessed” with dual covers – one with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren and the other with Daisy Ridley’s Rey. Written by The Magicians’ author Lev Grossman and interspersed with photos from Annie Leibovitz, this massive article was the talk of the Twittersphere for days after its release.

Grossman’s Vanity Fair article is… alright. It doesn’t really focus on Finn, but I gave up on folks remembering that Finn was supposed to be the male hero of the franchise – and just as heroic as Rey – back when The Last Jedi came out.

In the article, there’s a particularly stunning photograph of John Boyega’s Finn and newcomer Naomi Ackie’s Jannah sitting astride a pair of orbaks – an equine adjacent species new to audiences. It’s an iconic photo as well because Jannah is only the third Black female character with dialogue in the franchise – and the first to be in a main trilogy – and this is the first time that the Star Wars franchise has had two Black characters interacting like this.

It’s something that clearly belongs to Finn and to Jannah –

So, of course, someone had to make it about Kylo Ren Ben Solo.

Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Keep Calm and Wait Your Turn

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One step forward for white women in nerdy culture… doesn’t actually equal a step forward for all women.

After years of talking and writing about the need for representation in media, I obviously recognize the need for representation in media.

However, I can’t stop feeling some frustration about how white women are frequently set up by nerds and within fandom as the proper first stop for representation. Read More »

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Silly Ship Wars

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like_ Silly Ship Wars

Declaring the problem a ship war wasn’t so much revisionist history as wishful thinking: fans like to consider fannish space utopian, and racism doesn’t belong in utopia— therefore the problem wasn’t racism, it was ships. This line of thinking was white privilege at its finest (or lowest), with POC fandom as its casualties.

From “Not So Star-Spangled Examining Race, Privilege and Problems in MCU’s Captain America Fandom” by Cait Coker and Rukmini Pande in The Darker Side of Slash Fan Fiction

Time and time again in fandom, it’s been proven that the easiest way to stop people from taking the critical thoughts of fans of color seriously when we talk about racism in fandom spaces is to reframe it all as “just” a ship war.

If criticism of racism can be dismissed as “just” jealous shippers lashing out at a supposedly better positioned or more liked ship, then no one has to wrestle with what we’re actually talking about:

That time and time again in fandom’s shippy spaces, fandom actively chooses whiteness. Fandom constantly chooses white characters, whitewashed characters of color, white experiences, and white fans over people of color – real and fictional.

If you reframe it as “just” a ship war where petty babies are out to police fandom because their ship isn’t doing so hot in the charts –

Who’s going to listen to us?

Why would anyone listen to us?Read More »

“A discipline overrun with whiteness”: #FSN2019 and Making a Statement – A Guest Post

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In April 2019, I was invited by Stitch, Cait Coker, and Robin Reid to be part of a Roundtable on Race and Racism in Fandom and Fan Studies at the PCA/ACA 2019 conference held in Washington DC, USA. The intention was to discuss Fandom and Fan Studies 10 years after the events of RaceFail ’09 to see if things had changed and, if so, how. While I didn’t speak to the events of RaceFail ’09 itself, it did inflect my critique of institutional responses that followed in the wake of a more recent event.
What follows here is a rough estimate of the things I said at the conference, much of which was unscripted. I should note that these are my views alone and that I do not speak for Rukmini Pande, who was also involved in the series of events I plan to discuss.
At the same time, I should also be clear that many of the points that follow are points that fans of colour (hereafter FOC) and acafans of colour (as well as acafans working on critical race theory in fandom) have already noted. In a multiplicity of ways, I am echoing their work, restating it, forcibly reinscribing it as best as I can, and ascribing it as best as I can (and Rukmini is part of this, though again she is not the first).
As previously noted, these conversations have been around for far longer than us, and to assume that we are the first to voice this discomfort, this anger, this complaint (per Sara Ahmed) is to be complicit in this erasure and our own eventual erasure. These are not just my words, this is not just my voice.

Read More »

Stitch Takes On… Spider-Man: Homecoming [Audio Post + 2019 Transcript]

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Stitch Takes On - Spider-Man Homecoming

Reuploaded with a new professional (ish) quality transcript!

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All right. This is my review of Spider-Man: Homecoming. You can probably guess that this will have spoilers, profanity, snark beyond belief, and some major Tony Stark hate because I hate Tony Stark.

Let’s get started.Read More »

Stitch Media Mix’s 20 Most Popular Posts

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In case you’re new here or have no idea where to actually start with my posts, here are 20 of my most popular posts from 2015 until (now in order from most popular on down).

Some are popular because angry white people hopped on them to yell at me thanks to getting linked to my posts on reddit and fail fandom anon, others (like the Anita Blake post) are popular because a bigger blogger fish shouted me out.

At the end of the day, these are my biggest posts and the best way to see what kind of writer I’ve been and maybe where I plan on going next.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me, pumpkins!Read More »

Fleeting Frustrations #6: “At Least Kylo Never Lied To Rey”

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Fleeting Frustrations #6_ _At Least Kylo Never Lied To Rey_.png

“I’m not a hero. I’m not Resistance. I’m a stormtrooper.”

That silenced her. He might as well have hit her across the face with the business end of a blaster.

“Like all of them, I was taken from a family I’ll never know,” he continued rapidly. “I was raised to do one thing. Trained to do one thing. To kill my enemy.” He felt something that should not have been there, that was not part of his training, well up in him. “But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn’t going to kill for them. So I ran. As it happens, right into you. And you asked me if I was Resistance, and looked at me like no one ever had. So I said the first thing that came to mind that I thought would please you. I was ashamed of what I was. But I’m done with the First Order. I’m never going back.” Suddenly he found it hard to swallow, much less to speak. “Rey, come with me.”

– Foster, Alan Dean. The Force Awakens (Star Wars) (p. 222). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I know that this is a “Fleeting Frustrations” post which means that I should be able to get over the grievance I’m airing once it’s been aired, but let’s be real here: when have I ever let go of a single grievance in my life?

I haven’t yet and I won’t with this one.

In this rantypants installment of my grouchiest series, we’ll be talking about one of the Star Wars fandom’s most obvious signs of fandom racism: the idea that Finn’s biggest flaw to some folks in fandom is that he’s a liar… for not telling Rey that he was a Stormtrooper on the run mere moments after she’d beaten the crap out of him for thinking he was a thief.Read More »