Stitch @ Teen Vogue: How Ableism Can Manifest in Fandom—and How to End It

Stitch

At this point across fandoms, we largely recognize that framing fandom as only for “crazy fangirls” is harmful and incorrect. We push back at outside writers who insist upon the phrase, because it’s a narrative that is ableist and misogynistic, and on top of that, erases the presence of people who aren’t women in fandom. However, it’s important that we all work on looking critically about how we handle ableism within fandom as well.

I love growth. It’s super important to me regardless of what areas I’m growing in. Every year is a new version of my best self because I’m constantly growing and leveling up as a person so 2021!Stitch is going to be a better version of 2020!Stitch and both are just incredible when compared to me in 2009. One of the ways I’ve always struggled privately is with using ableist language. (I don’t do fanworks that often anymore, but I’ve always made sure to write responsibly as a content creator, utilizing some of the very resources I share in the piece.)

There are so many things that don’t ping as ableist even though, when you pull back and think about it… they’re pretty obvious. Trying to figure out the best ways to convey frustration with someone without hurting them or others who may see it – because you don’t know who will see your tweets and misfires hit the innocent often – is something I have been working on for a while. Sometimes I slip. But I always course correct and educate myself. Because that’s really all you can do.

That, and do better!

For a jumping off point, check out “How Ableism Can Manifest in Fandom—and How to End It” over at Teen Vogue!

[Guest Post] Alison the Beloved (Part Two)

Stitch

In the first part of this essay, I explored the portrayal of Black women in Doctor Who, using the example of Alison Cheney. She appears in Scream of the Shalka, a 2003 web animation. Preceding the 2005 TV reboot by two years, she is the first broadcast non-white companion. 

I wrote about Alison’s role as the Doctor’s beloved, a status unusual for Black characters, and how she could have challenged the New Who’s portrayal of Black women as largely disposable victims. At the same time, SotS’ refusal to give Alison the lived experience specific to a Black London woman in an all-white small town reduces her revolutionary potential.

Alison’s ability to change the Whoniverse is also limited by SotS’ — and Alison’s — unpopularity. In this part of my essay, I dig into fan characterizations of Alison, using the AO3 corpus as a representative sample. An examination of SotS fan content on AO3 reveals that Alison may be the Doctor’s beloved in SotS, but she’s largely unloved in fandom.

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Shortlisted Stitch @ IGNYTE Awards

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In absolutely exciting news, I’m one of the finalists for the 2021 IGNYTE Awards’ Critics Awards alongside Jesse (Bowties & Books), Charles Payseur (Quick Sip Reviews), Maria Haskins, and A. C. Wise! (You can see the full nomination slate on FIYAHCON’s Website!)

This is the first time I’ve ever been shortlisted for an award (despite my initial hopes considering the massive volume of my work in 2020… a Hugo Award nomination for Best Fan Writer clearly did not happen).

It means a ton to me because I just… haven’t felt like I was getting the respect and acknowledgement I know I’ve earned through my hard work on topics few other people are covering about fandoms and media. (Like one thing I included in my “hey nominate me for a Hugo” post was my coverage of what wasn’t covered in reviews of Docile.)

I’ve been at this for… a while. I started my site in 2015 but was talking about representation and issues with fandom approaching it from 2010/2011. And there’s always been just this overwhelming volume of pushback that was disproportionately massive when compared to the fact that people went out of their way to ignore that I existed or to misrepresent what I was saying. (Forever bitter about how June 2020 was the first time a lot of people realized that racism in fandom was a problem… and how they still made me into a bigger one.)

Anyway, yes, I was disheartened at the lack of recognition in the face of horrifying amounts of harassment I was getting at the same time BUT being on the shortlist means a lot to me. I do a ton of work covering fandom as fairly as I can manage and in engaging critically with media, being careful to acknowledge my own biases where they come into play.

It’s so overwhelming to see my hard work start to get recognized publicly by such an incredible magazine and I’m looking forward to the future and in celebrating all the really cool people who were nominated and who ultimately win!

If you want to vote for me (and you know… get your friends/interested nerds you know to also vote for me…

Voting for the IGNYTE Awards is open from now until May 21st @ 11:59PM EST.

GO VOTE!!

Music Video Anatomy #10 – Tough Cookie (ft. Don Mills)

Stitch

Missed what I’ve been doing with Music Video Anatomy? For the most recent installments, I covered WA$$UP (와썹 and Bermuda Triangle! We’re back on our bullshit this time and talking about Zico and hip hop masculinity!

You can’t actually embed the music video for the song because it’s age restricted, but go pull it up on YouTube to get what I was reacting to/responding to.

Title:  Tough Cookie (Feat. Don Mills)

Artist: Zico

Setting:

The most iconic setting of Tough Cookie really is Zico in the bathtub and I think it’s what everyone thinks of if they’ve seen the video before.

However, I can’t stop thinking about how this video is set in different working class settings (a warehouse, a garage and its parking lot) and luxe-ish nightclub and barber shop settings. Fadeaway, an 1LLIONAIRE collab video with a bunch of heavy hitters in Korean hip hop that we’ll tackle later, has a similar but more polished feel when it comes to the juxtaposition of scenarios/settings.

I don’t know that Zico or the MVs director ever talked about why they chose the settings that they did, but I think it really does work for the understanding/presentation of hip hop as something simultaneously linked with Being Poor but also having success and excess.

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Link Lineup – April 2021

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I Grew Up in a Majority-Minority Country. We Still Have a Problem with Anti-Blackness

I found my own Trinidadian upbringing confusing. On one hand, I was made to believe that race mattered very little, echoing sentiments of postraciality that surfaced after President Barack Obama was elected. My schoolbooks emphasized that Trinidad and Tobago was a rainbow utopia, evident by the shoehorning of as many creeds and races as could possibly fit into small, grayscale pictorial representations. I’d look at my face in the mirror—my light but definitely brown skin, my broad nose—clocking my features against the fact that my last name was confusingly Chinese (my great-grandfather on my dad’s side came from there) and wondering what the hell I was.

In the Caribbean, there are so many complex relationships with our Blackness, what Blackness could look like and who got to be Black in the first dang place. In islands like Trinidad where you have a more visible history of non-Black people of color (primarily Indian and Chinese) marrying and loving Black people, Blackness is complicated. And so is your understanding of where white supremacy fits in to the conversation. Because the people in power in Trinidad, in the Virgin Islands, in Jamaica… aren’t actually or typically white people. And yet, white supremacy thrives in these places to the point of harming people of color who live there.

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Meme-ing For A Reason #6 – You Used To Be Able To Hide Your Dogwhistles…

Stitch
The Drake “Hotline Bling” meme where top Drake is rejecting “Making racists and racist fanworks unwelcome in fandom spaces” and the bottom Drake is totally down with “deciding that anti racism in in fandom is inherently anti fandom instead”.

In his 2019 release How To Be An Antiracist, historian Ibram X. Kendi defines an antiracist as “one who is supporting an antiracist policy or expressing an antiracist idea”.

There are few actual antiracists in fandom.

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[Thread Collection] Pro-Everything But Reading Comprehension, I see

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Thread on my locked account from Jun 17, 2020.

What I wrote: Black characters get a specific kind of racist fanwork where it’s clear that the author is using fandom and their fanworks to abuse and torture them into place. Those are clearly racist fanworks and exist to harm. This should be something we can do something about.

What someone conveniently ignoring what I’m literally and CLEARLY saying got out of it: Stitch wants all stories with violence against Black characters taken down because she is an ANTI

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Stitch @ Teen Vogue: What “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” Teaches Us About Fandom Misogynoir

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Fans identifying with characters and applying their understanding of social justice-oriented issues to them isn’t inherently a bad thing. But there’s a catch: fandom’s activism and desire to push back against problematic portrayals (or endings) tends to work on behalf of white characters (like Lexa and Castiel, and now Bucky) at the direct expense of Black and brown characters.

If there’s one thing I’m really good at, it’s talking about misogynoir in fandom. (I have an entire mini-series about it here actually!) Fandom has always been primed to believe the worst of Black women – be they characters, fans, or even the performers themselves. What we’ve been seeing since Friday when episode four dropped, is a solid example of misogynoir in fandom and how it’s often done in defense of a white male character.

I love me some Bucky, but the way his standom has been acting about Black characters and now, specifically about Ayo and somehow Shuri) since the start of the show has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Because this is the fandom pattern: come up with a valid complaint (in this case, the ableism they clocked in the one scene) and then use it to do something super invalid… dismiss and dump on a Black female character.

Ready to read more about this latest round of misogynoir in fandom? Go check out “What “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” Teaches Us About Fandom Misogynoir” now!

[Thread Collection] Antiblackness & Anti Shipping (4/12/2021) + Additional Thoughts

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Original thread here for those of y’all following me on the locked main & lightly edited for clarity and to input some explanation at the end.

I would genuinely like nonblack people in fandom to think about how antiblack fans devote months and even years of their time to hating Black characters… Usually over shipping in canon or fandom and how that NEVER counts as “anti shipping” while Black fans’ pushback always does.

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[Thread Collection] The Archive As Fandom Dream Thoughts (4/10/2021 + 4/8/2021)

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Today has been full of people talking critically about the AO3’s failures in response to a viral tweet about ao3 as “the fucking fan fiction dream complaint” and yet another moment of folks in fandom going “well i don’t see valid complaints so they don’t exist. As I am still locked due to the horrifying antiblack harassment from February and the fact that I’m multiple fandoms’ favorite punching bag for no actual reason beyond the fact that I write about racism in fandom like this… I’ve reposted some of today’s Twitter thoughts here.

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Fandom Racism 201: Introduction

Stitch

Starting soon, we’re leveling up to Fandom Racism 201.

The goal of what I’ve been privately calling my “school series” is to constantly level up and look at different fandoms, experiences, and displays of racism in fandom/fanworks.

Fandom Racism 101 is about general fandom experience linked with racism. So far, we’ve covered fandom fragility, the empathy gap, dealing with trolls, and body politics. While there’s more to cover for Fandom Racism 101 – we’ve got about 5-7 more pieces planned so far with commissioned guest pieces in the works – it’s time to move to the next level.

What’s the next level?

Looking at specific fandoms and talking about the facts of racism in those fandoms/their most popular fanworks. Incorporating screenshots and posts from people who were in the thick of it alongside theory and practical advice, Fandom Racism 201 aims to provide a framework for future understandings of where those fandoms went wrong and basic advice on how to avoid those particular pitfalls on your way through to other fandoms.

As with everything else I do: if you’re interested in writing about your fandom (past or present) for Fandom Racism 201,  feel free to send me a message on my contact form or in my DMs on my website’s Twitter so we can figure something out and I can commission work from you!

Class is in session this summer!

I’m looking forward to schooling y’all.

A Thought Exercise On Antiblack Microaggressions In Fandom, I Suppose

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I just want to talk about how people purposefully misrepresent my work/tweets and assign meanings to it that are actually entirely absent. Because I need to walk through the weirdness to see if I can make it make sense to any of us and just so I can express my feelings in my own space.

If I write a piece, like this one on queer coding villains and the Kylo/Hux fandom from 2018 (brought up because it’s one of the most recent times this misreading/misrepresentation has happened to me), I would think that the meaning is clear.

That piece uses the fandoms for Kylo and Hux (as a pair, but also as individuals) as a way to talk about how queer coded villains were created often hinging on stereotypes and who gets to be coded (or understood as such) within fandom. It provides examples of two social media posts about this POV on a queer (coded) Hux that I felt exemplified what the fandom at the time (in 2018) was saying, talked about historical queer-coding, explains what representation actually is in these cases, and quotes queer critical theorist Alexander Doty’s POV on queer-coding and what it’s bound up in it.

And what does wider fandom get from the post?

What they’ve gotten every single time they’ve interacted with or seen not the actual post but the combination of a quote from the article and the “Dark Side Trio” in the header with the title “Queer Coded Villains Aren’t That Awesome” this past Tuesday?

They complain that I am an “anti” of that ship or that I, noted Thrawn fancier and villain stan on main, hate villains.

They get that I hate Kylo/Hux as a ship. They get that I still hate it. (Even though, I have never really expressed an opinion on the pairings I talk about beyond expressing dislike of how the fandom for that ship and those characters woobifies those men, turning them into villains and actively pretending they’re not fash as fuck and hyping them in a way they straight up don’t do for anyone that’s not a white man in canon.)

None of what those fans believe of me or my work is true, of course, but as we covered in February… none of it has to be.

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[Image + Essay] Look At Those Launderers

Stitch

Originally Posted on Patreon 11/3/2020.

Source: What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Weaponized White Womanhood

There’s an interesting twitter thread called “The Fascist Infiltration of Subculture” and it’s something I find very interesting because of how people who can reference the infiltration of other fandoms or online communities… stall out when it comes to realizing what is active and present in their fandom spaces.

And believe me, there are a lot of fascists and bigots in fandom spaces outside of things like G@merGate or Comicsg@te or even the Brony and furry fandoms. Transformative fandom spaces are actually a space with its own issues that allow bigots to plant their seeds and grow fruit.

Think about it: fandom is a place where anything goes as long as it is clearly fiction or in defense of fiction. People are encouraged in this post-Voltron Legendary Defenders world to push back hard against anything they see as censorship in fandom or of media that fandom likes… and that has, increasingly, come to include anti-racism in fandom.

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April Outlook/March Retrospective

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I’m still struggling to get back in the groove after being yeeted off the path in February thanks to That Nonsense and just… all the awful terrible things in the news (like the escalation in anti-Asian hate crimes on top of some bad stuff in local politics/policing).

I’m still writing through the stress though and I’m still looking for a new Day Job as freelance is not actually feasible for me for long-term since you know… insurance. However, I think I finished everything I had planned for March or moved them around so I felt like I did!

Here are some March highlights for y’all from my neck of the woods:

So what’s up for April?

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