Once Again No Webtoon Wednesday…

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I know everyone mourns when I don’t provide them with new webtoons to be irresponsibly invested in (like Lout of Count’s Family now on Tapas as well) but uh…

This time it’s because I am undergoing immense financial stress and I’m trying to speed run through hustle culture, figure out if floribamageorgia has loan sharks I can link up with, and eat/drink my feelings. 

If you’re on Patreon, you may have seen where I finally had an update about my current housing situation. I mentioned it in the GFM I’m doing for my sister and the niecelings, that my apartment was giving me trouble. The trouble is… mold everywhere in my apartment at super high levels that have been impacting my health and quality of life beyond that. 

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Pages and Prejudice Episode 2: Kissing Kin

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Episode two of our podcast is up!

This week, Adrie lets me take the wheel on an expansive episode all about why we (broadly, but not entirely) like incest in romance and see it as a site not just for taboos but for a deep intimacy. I use my literature degree real hard here, finally figuring out what the abject is just in time to make a case for it in eroticizing incest.

Check out our podcast wherever you get podcasts and please, because I don’t have a social media presence, share with folks who like this stuff! (And even with the ones who hate it because they’ll learn some shit, I swear!)

We’ve done made a podcast

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Why does no one know what a knot is anymore?

Adrie Rose and I have made a podcast for all things romance (and beyond – we’re going to talk about romance and eroticism IN pop culture, not just romance novels and erotic works)! This has been in the works for months and I’m so happy to do this with Adrie, one of the coolest and funniest people I know!

Pages and Prejudice

By Adrie Rose & Stitch

Join two lifelong romance enthusiasts, and professional haters, as we dive deep into the world of trending romances. From swoon-worthy moments to cringe-worthy clichés, we dissect the tropes, tea, and taboos of Romancelandia, BookTok, and beyond. No trope is off-limits as we explore why we love, hate, and love to hate the stories that captivate us. Tune in for all the tea on love, lust, and everything in between!

Our first episode, on monster smashing, is out now. and you can listen to it everywhere you listen to your podcasts! Please listen, laugh, rate, subscribe, and share — especially because social media is THROTTLING our reach on Instagram and TikTok when we try to get people listening.

Black Fans Get Run Out of Fandom All The Time

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Near the 21st, tumblr user ororomunroedontpullout (re)posted about how annoying it was to see (primarily white) fans use “ACAB” to talk about people they consider “fancops” – which can and often does explicitly include people of color talking about racism in fandom. (This is something I also find particularly infuriating, as you know.)

One of the fandom-brained responses they got? Phoenix-kin-home sending them the following message:

Genuinely, if you can’t understand how being driven out of online spaces where one finds community and friends, especially if they struggle to irl, can be harmful to people, then I don’t know how to convince you. I hope you have a nice week, and realize why you’re wrong.

Ororomunroedontpullout handled it well. She pointed out both that what that user describes isn’t police brutality and, once the user came back to moan about “the actual issue”, that the real issue that they’re talking about is that people harassing you on the internet is not the same as police brutality.

Anyway, that user’s comment made me think about something. They mention that “being driven out of online spaces where one finds community and friends […] can be harmful to people”.

But Black people are consistently alienated in and forced out of fandom, and no one gives a shit.

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Stitch Reads Smolder (Anita Blake #29) – Chapters 25-28

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How do I convince Laurell K Hamilton that it’s okay to use “naughty” language that’s also direct?

I know I keep complaining about this for ages, but how can I refrain when the first part of Chapter 25 has Anita noting that in heels, she’s tall enough that she and Richard’s hips are pressed against each other and “the soft mound of his body lay warm and solid against [her].”

Again, that’s his dick, he’s got the beginnings of an erection, and everyone – writer and characters alike – is too old to resort to blurry vagueness around genitals that should be colliding momentarily.

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Do You Think If I Beat This Horse Enough It’ll Actually Die?

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This piece on racist spite fic – sparked by someone writing thousands of words of such to get back at “antis” in the MDZS fandom after a BNF requested and then received racist threadfic – is getting clicks again and I know why.

It’s because, as is the case when racists in fandom do something racist… they never get the same consequences or pushback as people like me calling out racism or just speaking about it mildly. So people are finding out that the two people involved did this racist thing and then a third person did a more racist thing. Two years later. Because BNFs can do no wrong. Obviously.

But this isn’t the point of the audiopost, not fully.

Although, I will say it’s wild to see people who actively participate (present tense) in harassing, mocking, and punishing me for talking about racism in any fandom speak out against “hunting” people across the internet and out of fandom after they continue to do just that to me,

The point of this audio post is the horse I’m beating.

It’s the “you guys need to leave me out of your shit” of it all.

Especially because it’s not like you’re sharing my work with people who will read it in good faith or like you’re defending me at the risk of your own reputation and relationships. The vast majority of people who share my work do so knowing the people they’re linking it to will say awful shit about me. The majority of the people who invoke my name as some fandom spectre of anti racism do so knowing that they’re speaking to people who have a messed up mythology of me in their minds.

And honestly?

You all know the company you keep.

Keep me out of it!

[Ships ‘n Shit] Mahito/Junpei (Jujutsu Kaisen)

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“Just like how water flows through the earth… life simply flows. For you, me and everyone else — it’s the same. Without meaning. Without value. That’s why you can do whatever you want. Live the way you want. Don’t limit yourself to just being indifferent. There’s no reason to live by such a restricting philosophy. If you’re hungry, eat. If you hate, kill. I support… everything you represent, Junpei.”

— Mahito to Junpei in Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 21: “Young Fish and Reverse Punishment, Part 3”
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stitch wraps up 2023

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I use my YouTube channel approximately once a year to talk about the previous year. So, here we are. Here’s what I was up to in 2023 and what I hope to do in 2024!

Love to my loves, curses to my haters~

I plan to be my best-worst self this year!

Fandom Hot Take Corner – Week 1/Day 1

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For all our sakes, I’m trying to wring myself dry of free-pouring fandom thoughts by the 31st so here’s another rousing rendition of “No you don’t actually like villains if you get mad and weird when the bad guy in a battle shonen/star wars film you like actually has haters” featuring the jujutsu kaisen fandom.

Season 2 will be done soon and then I will be free from a really unexpected hell… the small circle of Mahito fans who think he’s actually a little meow meow baby boy who should “win” and that is being hated For No Reason. (I love Mahito an unreasonable amount. I enjoy the pain he causes. He’s good because he’s so dang bad. A widdle soft baby he is not and it is weird to see people act like he is/that should be the dominant fandom reading of him.)

Anyway, check the Villain Woobification article from last year that got me called homophobic, racist, and sexist! Think Your Fave Fictional Villain Is the Real Hero? Think Again.

[Tropes To Talk About] Whoops, I Made My Brother A Siscon

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Trope: Suddenly, My Brother Is A Siscon

Trope Symptoms: obsessive brothers in the way of romance, clueless sisters/sister figures, a reincarnator or transmigrator step or adoptive sister changes the story a bit too much, frequently set in a BL novel transmigration series, boundaries pushed but not crossed,

Genre/Sub-genre: Boys Love (sort of), romantic fantasy

As Seen In: Touch My Brother and You Die (Webtoon), Brother Knows Best, The Villainess is a Marionette,  Villainess Is Changing Her Role to a Brocon, Here Comes the Silver Spoon, My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom, Lady Rose Just Wants to Be A Commoner, The Viridescent Tiara, Taming My Villainous Little Brother

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“I Didn’t Expect To Marry Him… But I’m Still Hurt”: Revisiting The Parasocial Relationship

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Note: By the time this piece eventually came back to me as a thing to publish, Yuzuru Hanyu and his wife had divorced because of harassment from his fans, Taylor Swift had moved on from Healy to a football player with a mid digital footprint, and… I have no idea what Doja is doing with her love life. Normally, I’d fully scrap the piece but… it’s too good to jettison despite being Old News at points.

“Kick out Chen and Chanyeol who are hurting the group, Stop deceiving the fans, EXO doesn’t need vicious members, Chen and Chanyeol OUT”

This is a message plastered across a mobile billboard that was apparently stationed outside of SM Entertainment in summer 2023, calling for the removal of two of the group’s members. While fans’ ire towards Chanyeol stem from rumors that he’s a serial cheater who causes damage to his group’s reputation, the reason why the fans want Chen gone? He got his fiancée pregnant before marriage and before enlistment a few years back. From the second that his relationship – with a non-famous woman – was revealed, several EXO-Ls, the group’s very vocal fanbase, and unaffiliated Korean internet users (of course) took to the internet and made it known that they weren’t pleased and that they thought his relationship ruined EXO’s reputation in the public eye.

When it comes to the love lives of idols, Korean fans have been associated with being extra possessive of their fandom objects: the idols and actors that they adore.

Because of the nature of the idol-fan relationship – one where idols actively participate in the parasocial relationship as a form of marketing and fans can win opportunities to interact with their idols one on one in the form of in-person and virtual events – the deep relationship that develops is intense and can become negative on the part of the fans who believe the idol-fan parasocial relationship is a) mutually intense and b) something that gives them the right to dictate their idol’s behavior and comment on it as well.

However, that’s not to say that Korean fans have cornered the market when it comes to raging or weeping when their fandom object gets in a relationship or has children out of wedlock.

They most certainly do not.

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Stitch Reads Smolder (Anita Blake #29) – Chapters 22-24

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I think my biggest question as I started this segment of Smolder is “are Graham and Anita gonna smash?”.

As we covered last time, the Anitaverse is not kind to characters of color and their characters get assassinated in a way that white male characters usually don’t… unless they (allegedly) represent one of Hamilton’s former loves. Graham is one of those characters that has never felt like he was respected in the narrative. He was a character who was mildly annoying and almost instantly removed from the running for a shot at being one of Anita’s sweeties… and it was frustrating because Graham is not good enough to be a boo but serial rapist and murderer Olaf might be? It’s infuriating.

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