Stitch Does Stuff in April 2019

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Stitch does stuff in april 2019

March sure was a month…

I spent the last half it in a fog for a variety of reasons – job interview that went well not going anywhere, reawakened fear that I’ll never get financial stability, screwing up a job opportunity that I did get, and an anxiety + depression combo about being a burden to my friends and family – and it wasn’t great.

I didn’t quite get everything done that I wanted to do and since this would be the third month for a few of those things… I think it’s a sign that I should scrap them for the time being. (“Them” being the Nakia and Mariah posts as well as the one on the nobility.) They’re just not clicking in my head despite how interesting I find them so I’ll be taking them off my writing roster for the time being.

This month is going to be a very busy one offline. Both of my parents, my small niece, and one of my older brothers have birthdays this month and on top of that, I’ll be in Washington DC a whole week for PCA 2019 thanks to a Fairy God Academic who’s made this whole experience possible and really helped keep me afloat as I’ve been struggling. I’ve never been to DC and the last time I went to PCA was in 2017 so I’m just going to be a Mess.

ARGH!

Anyway, because I’ve got a lot going on this April, I’m trying to take things a little slowly and be gentler on myself when it comes to writing and creating content.Read More »

[Guest Post] Searching for Black Mothers: Looking in the Margins of Black Panther and Into the Spider-Verse

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This awesome guest post comes courtesy of Samira Nadkarni! Images in the header are from ComingSoon.net (Spider-Verse) and KissThemGoodbye.net (Black Panther).

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Earlier this week, I read Zina’s post on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the character of Miles Morales, and the idea of authenticity. While agreeing wholeheartedly with the post itself, I found myself struggling to articulate my current position, which is that while these films construct nationalistic racial and cultural narratives in ways that allow for reclamation and representation, the process of these claims seem to hinge on specific connections between fatherhood, masculinity, and nationality.

While women are present, and while mothers are present, they’re somehow not part of that narrative. This is a complex and confounding thing because these films aren’t being positioned as inherently patriarchal or lacking in female characters, yet the underlying implications of its narrative suggest extremely traditional patriarchal ideology.

My hope is that I can briefly trace this out here, and maybe that we can consider the ways in which films like Into the Spider-Verse and Black Panther centre Blackness, authenticity, heritage, a coming into oneself, and national identity, while also seeing how this amazing intergenerational space is somehow all about Black fathers and isn’t necessarily leaving a whole lot of room for Black mothers.Read More »

Looking Back: The Authority Volume 1 (Issues 1 -12)

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Note: Depending on the format of the source media and what makes organizing my thoughts easier, the overall format of this blog series will be flexible to accommodate that! So this first, comics-focused installment of In Retrospect won’t be repeated for (as an example), me talking about an episode of “Smallville” that stuck with me.

I do not claim to hold the copyright to The Authority or the images in this post. I may own copies of the books, but that’s it entirely.

Content Notes: references to racism, misogyny, colonialism, fascism, and homophobia

Looking Back - The Authority.png

I got into The Authority right around the time that DC shut the doors on the Wildstorm universe for what I thought might be the last time.

A dear friend in the DC fandom, Sasha, had gotten me into the series after seeing me comment on fanart of Apollo and Midnighter with the kind of excitement that really only comes from getting to call a character “gay murder Batman” and pointed me in the direction of the series and some of its best arcs.

I started with Warren Ellis’s second volume of Stormwatch (which introduced the characters that’d go on to be part of The Authority and went on from there. It remains one of the series I reread as often as possible because the storylines and characters are just flat out fun to fuss over.

With DC’s The Wild Storm reinventing all of the characters from this run, I thought it’d be a perfect opportunity to look back at the first twelve issues of The Authority. What was so awesome about Ellis’s first run and why is it that Mark Millar and Frank Quitely’s following turn on the series so dang distressing?

And above all: does this series still deserve the hype in my head?

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Read More »

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse and Miles Morales: Spider-Man: When Authenticity Matters

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Miles Spidey Sense.jpg
COPYRIGHT: © 2018 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

INT. MILES’ APARTMENT – BEDROOM MILES MORALES draws HOME-MADE STREET ART NAME-TAGS at a desk, headphones on, singing along to a song he’s too young for (”Sunflower”), but he doesn’t quite know the words yet.

It’s no secret that part of what launched Into the Spider-Verse into the stratosphere and gained it tons of love from critics and audiences alike was how, for an animated movie starring superheroes and a cartoon pig from another dimension, real and relatable a film it was.

Spider-Man is one of the most relatable superheroes out there and when he’s not relatable, you know he’s not being written well. Even in the recent Spider-Man video games, little and large things alike serve to make you feel like you get insight into Peter Parker’s familiar life. Sure, he’s a superhero that swings across the skyline saving folks from all kinds of crime, but he’s also a nerd who loves his aunt and gets distracted by cool weird things and makes bad jokes.

Peter has had decades of being written to be relatable. Recently, he almost always feels like an authentic example of a millennial trying to make it work in New York.

Miles… hasn’t exactly had that.

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Ships ‘N Shit: Thor/Ororo Marvel

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thororo header

Throroro is the best ship you’re probably not shipping.

A non-canon ship courtesy of Marvel fandom’s penchant for shipping everything under the sun, pairing up Thor and Ororo just sort of makes sense when you think about it. Thor’s a lightning “god” from Asgard with biceps for days and a heart of gold while Ororo is basically a weather goddess who could change the entire world if she felt like it.

While they aren’t a canon ship, they’ve got a ton of potential as a totally electric ship and a small but dedicated fanbase. Read More »

Audio Backlog: Anita Blake Reread: Guilty Pleasures

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“Vampires are People, too.”

– The button that Monica Vespucci is wearing when she and Anita first meet echoes a repeated message in this series about how vampires are people too. But people you know… suck. So vampires do too, and not just because it’s how they get nourishment.

MP3:

Source Post:  The Great Big Anita Blake Reread – Guilty Pleasures

I’m trying to make my work more accessible to a larger audience so that means Patreon-first recordings of me reading my longer essays and parts of my various series at the $1 Tier before they get put up here.

If there’s a post you couldn’t make it through because of its length and would prefer having as an audio file, drop me a line and I’ll bump it up the list!

Small Stitch Giveaway 2019

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Can y’all believe it’s been FOUR YEARS since I started running Stitch’s Media Mix?

I know I can’t!

I started this site in 2015 because all I had for an online presence as a blogger was Tumblr and I wanted something more stable and permanent in order to get a shot at writing for outlets like BookRiot or The Mary Sue. (The latter did happen, by the way! So neat!)

I’ve had good months and bad months, but at the end of the day I love having my website and this space to talk about the things I love and the stuff I can’t stand. I love that I have been able to become a better and more accessible writer thanks to y’all! I love that I have loyal readers who pop in to see what I’m wailing about now, folks who are interested in my thoughts on fandom and urban fantasy.

But most of all, I love y’all!

I couldn’t do ANY of this without y’all supporting me and my writing!

So to my fellow Anita Blake hate-readers, my “frustrated with fandom, but still a part of it” nerds, and everyone that’s ever gone into a reading spiral on my site:

Thank you for reading and for sharing my work! I am so grateful for you all!

And I’d like to show that appreciation with… a giveaway.

A tiny giveaway because I’m beyond broke, but a giveaway nonetheless.

One lucky website subscriber will win ebook copies of two of the novellas in Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series, the F/F romance Once Ghosted, Twice Shy and her upcoming M/F story Can’t Escape Love (out March 19).

Two other winners, if there are enough comments to justify expanding the giveaway a bit, will simply each get an ebook copy of Once Ghosted, Twice Shy OR Can’t Escape Love (depending on which book you already have).

Basically, this giveaway is open to anyone that:

  • Subscribes to my website
  • Who comments on this post using the account/email address they subscribe with
  • Has a US Amazon account

So folks, if you want in: comment away! I’ll announce the winners at the end of the month!

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Misogynoir – Black Actresses Under Attack

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Don’t forget to check out last month’s post and the introduction!

wfrll - misogynoir - black actresses under attack

  • U simple bitch. This is why comic book fans hate Hollywood. The criticism is not b/c U R an African actress but that ur 3 personas look too human wearing cheaply made costumes . U didn’t even care enough to Youtube the animated series and actually research the characters. (a comment sent to Anna Diop on twitter by user @Walter_Stylez on 4/13/2018)
  • I’m grateful you made starfire hideous and ugly, you are her first adaptation that looks less exciting. I’m sure this will make people choose batgirl over starfire now cuz she’s more prettier of a love interest. Dickbabs all the way!!! Thank you Anna for propping up my ship!!! – From twitter user @dickbabs3 on Twitter directly in response to Anna Diop posting an image of herself in a suit on 12/11/2018

Name a Black actress in a popular nerdy franchise and I’m pretty sure I can find you proof of people claiming that they:

  • Are too ugly
  • Aren’t talented enough
  • Are too “ghetto”
  • Don’t have enough chemistry (with the nearest white person)

To play the role they’ve been cast in.

Angel Coulby didn’t just have to deal with people claiming historical anachronism for her casting because Guinevere stems from a Welsh name that means “fair/white and smooth” in a show full of historical inaccuracy and sorcery.

She had to deal with a ton of “I’m not racist, but”s claiming that she was a terrible actress, that she wasn’t attractive enough to play Gwen, that she wasn’t young or refined enough… you know the drill.Read More »

[Stitch Likes Stuff] “Criticism Will Never Be Censorship”

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Writers these days are awfully sensitive. I keep seeing published authors – and people who want to be published – wailing on social media about their fear of censorship and how we’re basically just a few bleak moments away from turning to book burning as a society.

Only problem?

When these writers wail about censorship, what they’re generally wailing against is… the right that readers have to comment critically about the content they’re consuming or prepared to consume. Readers criticizing a newly/unreleased book (via an advance copy) for unaddressed problematic or even bigoted content isn’t the same as a government deciding what people can create and consume when it comes to content.

Over on Intersections in the Darkest Visions in her article “Criticism Will Never Be Censorship“, my friend Lyana pokes holes in the very flawed idea that criticism is what’s really wrong with publishing these days… (instead of how publishing allows bigoted, problematic, and just plain flawed content to be bought, published, and promoted without thinking of marginalized fans prior to like… all of that).

It’s an amazing article across the board, but here’s one choice quote from it that should get you on your way over there to read the whole thing:

“Social theory is not something convenient you can toss away the minute it’s no longer profitable for your writing. Media doesn’t stop affecting reality because it happens to be fictional or in a more speculative genre. If anything, speculative fiction can have the most powerful effect on its readers because its foundation rests on the worlds we create, not the world that we currently live in.”

Go check out “Criticism Will Never Be Censorship” right now!

[Book Review] Em Ali’s Graham’s Delicacies (+ Aesthetic)

Stitch

Pretend this review went up uh… yesterday as I lost track of days again… Please and thank you.

Graham's Delicacies Cover

Em Ali’s Graham’s Delicacies is a super cute follow-up to her previous book Soft on Soft. This collection is home to a trio of interconnected stories about the various intimate relationships between the people work at the titular bakery.

I got a copy of the collection from the author in exchange for an honest review and the chance to read a book about non-binary cuties, so let’s get started by diving into the stories!Read More »

The Great Big Anita Blake Reread: Approaching the Ardeur (An Explainer)

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The Great Big Anita Blake Reread_ Approaching the Ardeur (An Explainer)

As I’ve dragging my heels on finishing Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake #10) for the next installment of my reread series, I’ve realized that there’s one small problem with how I talk about the Anitaverse. I keep assuming that you all have already read the series and are familiar with how everything works and therefore I don’t slow down to explain things that are probably confusing to the uninitiated.

So for the next two or three months, I’ll be writing mini-primers to three of the biggest worldbuilding bits that are semi-constant across the Anitaverse that I haven’t explained (but really need to before I keep going any further).

For this month, I’ll be covering the ardeur.

Content warnings for this primer: descriptions of sexual assault, “fuck or die”/”sex pollen” scenarios, rape culture, and sex-negative feminism framed as “sex positive” feminism, homophobia, a reference to an adult having sex with a teenager

“I thought you would be angry with me for giving you the ardeur, the fire, the burning hunger.”

The ardeur is first named in the thirteenth chapter of Narcissus in Chains after Micah assaults Anita in the previous chapter while she’s under her first brush of the ardeur.

In the chapter, after Anita shamefully admits to having sex with Micah (and again, it was rape), Jean-Claude confesses to having hidden this power from her and to denying his own hunger for sex because he know she wouldn’t approve.

Here’s the first of many issues with the ardeur.

Prior to this book, there’s nothing within the Anitaverse that tells us that Jean-Claude has this power hidden within his body.Read More »

Stitch Does Stuff in March 2019

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Stitch does stuff in march 2019

I told y’all that February would probably be a slow month for me and well… it was.

Visiting my father was fantastic and I loved seeing my brother, sister-in-law, and the little niblings, BUT my already slow writing process got slowed down to next to nothing.

So March, for the most part, will be all about playing catch-up on my website and on Patreon.

So anything I didn’t get to do in February will be getting done in March and there’ll be new posts going up between my website, Patreon, and my Dreamwidth account (which I keep forgetting about).

(You can check out last month’s post for details about the pieces I’ll be trying again in March.)

I’ve got a busy month ahead as I continue looking for full-time work and prepare for PCA in April, but writing remains my biggest priority! I’m looking forward to meeting my goals this month!

Now, let’s get to the goods!Read More »

[Tweet Share] Threads from 2/23 – 2/25

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I know there’s some overlap between the folks that support me on Patreon, folks who subscribe to my website, and the folks that follow me on Twitter, but tweets are hard to keep up with.

So I’m playing curator for a minute.

Earlier today, I got distracted from writing (which, granted, isn’t very hard to do) by someone attempting to whitesplain racism and fandom’s open lack of empathy towards Finn from Star Wars. This person even included a whole “this isn’t about race” thing even as they embodied one of the most racist aspects of the fandom: the lack of empathy towards Finn and refusal to actually engage with him as he is (rather than making up weird and problematic untruths about him).

(I’m calling this thread: What Fandom Racism Looks Like: The Empathy Gap in Action but I probably won’t actually turn it into a WFRLL essay because I don’t have the time. But I had the time today… to be a petty and furious Stitch.)

Bonus threads from days before:

A thread about anti-blackness in k-pop fandoms (re: rap/rappers)

“conveniently only caring about ‘real racism’ when fans of color are talking about racism IS RACIST”

double standards and empathy (kylo and finn)

on how white female characters (like jessica jones, wynonna earp, and peggy carter) on shows that are problematic wrt race REALLY don’t represent ~us~

 

What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Misogynoir – Black Women in the Way

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Don’t forget to check out last month’s post and the introduction!

wfrll - misogynoir - black women in the way

I may later eat my words because I haven’t seen more than season 1 of ToS or any of the movies but I hate that Uhura in the reboot is just a love sick puppy that follows Spock around. Like she doesn’t even resemble herself and she feels less of a character. (A tweet from twitter user @meganbytetweets from 2/4/2018.)

That sucks i just really hate iris and barry idk i rather ship him with linda, patty or caitlin lol (A tweet from twitter user Amber_G27 from 4/6/2018.)

Few things inspire more misogynoir than a Black female character that fandom thinks “gets in the way” of a ship involving two white characters.

When Zoe Saldana was cast as Nyota Uhura in the 2009 Star Trek reboot film series, fans were fine… until it was revealed that Saldana’s Uhura was also in an established and committed relationship with Spock.

Then it became a problem.Read More »

The Great Anita Blake ReRead: Obsidian Butterfly

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Note: this installment covers and talks about racism. sexual violence, and gaslighting in mild detail for the most part. In the final part, I also mention some of the upcoming events in the Anitaverse including a reference to Anita having sex with an underage character and her sexual assault in the next book.

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Edward had saved my life more than once. I’d saved his more than once. Yet . . . yet . . . I’d miss Edward, but I’d kill him if I had to. Edward wonders why I’m so sympathetic to the monsters. The answer is simple. Because I am one.

I’m going to be perfectly honest with y’all: for many years, Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake #9) was the closest I ever came to having a favorite Anita Blake book.

Back when I’d first read it, just a little out of order and after all of the relationship drama and wonky sex scenes of the following books, I’d thought it was a captivating book that managed to push the relationship shit to the back of the book and focus on more human monsters instead of the main plot dealing with how awful vampires and shifters are (but telling us to empathize with them anyway).

Rereading it, I’ve realized that I was mostly… wrong.

In Obsidian Butterfly, Anita travels to Santa Fe, New Mexico after the ever-cryptic Edward – the bounty hunter and killer for hire that we last saw back when Mr. Oliver rolled into town a bunch of books back – calls in the favor that Anita somehow owes him because she… killed his partner at the time, a man who was actively trying to kill her. You know, because that makes all of the sense.

What’s waiting for Anita in Santa Fe?

Only a spate of grotesque murders and mutilations, Edward’s engagement to a woman that doesn’t know who and what he really is, henchmen with an axe to grind for their boss, and preternatural beings that are somehow even more messed up than the ones she’d left behind in St. Louis.

While a lot of things about Obsidian Butterfly don’t hold up almost twenty years after it was published, it’s actually… not that far from what I remembered and all in all, not an entirely un-enjoyable read in part because the main plot is one of the most solid across the Anitaverse to this day.

Strap yourselves in for another ridiculously long installment of my Great Big Anita Blake ReRead. I’ve got stuff to say about everything the novel did really well, what it still sucks at, and the one thing I wish I could carve out of the book with my bare bloody hands.

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