What Fandom Racism Looks Like: Beige Blank Slates

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What Fandom Racism Looks Like - Beige Blank Slates

“certain bodies could be read as blank slates not already overdetermined by race” – a partial quote from page 17 of Melanie E. S. Kohnen’s Screening the Closet: Queer Representation, Visibility, and Race in American Film and Television.

Some of fandom’s favorite characters are “blank slates”.

Beige blank slates, that is.

General Armitage Hux from the Star Wars sequel trilogy.

Arthur and Eames from Inception.

Q from Skyfall and Spectre.

Clint and Phil Coulson in the first Thor movie.

Various minor white male characters in a show or film that somehow became one of/the most popular characters in their source media or fandom.

In this installment of “What Fandom Racism Looks Like”, we’ll be looking at the idea of the “blank slate” primarily in Western media-focused slash fandom spaces.

We’ll be asking what a blank slate looks like, what these fans and fandoms get out of these characters, what characters will never be considered blank enough to be loved, and how, while the claim that fandom prefers “blank slate characters” might well be true and there are many instances where the Beige Blank Slate provides necessary representation within fandom, the preference that prioritizes white male characters above all others kind of messes up something that has the potential to be great.Read More »

Urban Fantasy 101: My Eight Favorite Urban Fantasy Reads of 2018

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Urban Fantasy 101 - Fave Reads.png

2018 was a great year for me for urban fantasy reads and for my Urban Fantasy 101 series overall. I had more hits in the genre than misses and I found books and authors that I’ll always adore. I was able to develop really interesting thoughts on worldbuilding from reading tons of urban fantasy books and I think I’m finally finding a balanced approach between celebration and criticism.

While I read a ton of urban fantasy in 2018, a fair amount of it wasn’t actually published this year. So, I’m going to wrap up the year by talking about the ones that were. Here are eight of what I thought 2018 had to offer as the best urban fantasy reads (that I’ve read all the way through)!Read More »

The Great Big Anita Blake ReRead: Burnt Offerings

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Content warnings: this installment of The Great Big Anita Blake Reread talks about rape and racism in mild detail (and they’re connected in my analysis of Hamilton’s writing in this book) that include repeated references to what winds up being the corrective rape of a Black lesbian

Burnt Offerings - 2000 UK Cover
Burnt Offerings – 2000 UK Cover

Once upon a time, the Anita Blake series used to be genuinely interesting. Hamilton would open the newest novel by introducing a new and weird element of her worldbuilding and Anita, our audience proxy and authorial self-insert would immediately start stumbling all over herself trying to figure it out before saving the day thanks to her inexplicable good luck and all the illegal weaponry and magical powers she winds up with.

Burnt Offerings, the seventh novel in the long-running Anita Blake series, was one of those interesting books back when I first read it a decade ago.

After being approached by a local firefighter to take down a pyrokinetic arsonist before they escalate in the book’s first chapter, Anita finds herself dropped hip deep in a mess of vampire politics and drama as the arsonist begins to turn to vampire victims. This is also the first novel after Anita and Jean-Claude started to sleep together (and I’m pretty sure that means she and Richard are broken up for the time being) and since it’s also set after Raina and Gabriel’s deaths, this means that leopard shifter problems are becoming Anita’s problems for the first time in the series.

This novel introduces several long-running characters who will become an integral part of Anita’s life as the series progresses and I’m going to be honest: like with refreshing myself with Richard, it’s nice to read these characters as they were before Hamilton ruined them. (Even though, this early on, you can see the problems that would later balloon out of control in characters like Asher and Nathaniel as the series progresses.)

So, let’s talk about what Burnt Offerings did decently, what it did poorly, and what I wish Hamilton had left on the editing room floor back when first working on it.Read More »

#FlashbackFriday – “Dear Budding Sleepy Hollow Fandom”

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Originally published on my Tumblr September 17, 2013. Seriously, it’s been five years of me talking about misogynoir in fandom and with shipping and things have gotten way worse instead of better. (Also, lightly edited for clarity.)

Abbie Mills from Sleepy Hollow Wikia.png

Dear Budding Sleepy Hollow Fandom,

Don’t do the thing.

Don’t do the thing where you go in deep to act like shipping a woman of color in a hetero relationship (with a white dude) is somehow helping the patriarchy.

Don’t do the thing where you constantly bring up how “it’s a preference” when the only people you don’t ship with the lead are the women of color holding court and kicking ass right with him.

Don’t be like the Skyfall fandom that put maybe 5 minutes of interaction between Q and Bond over everything with Moneypenny. (Ignoring how their relationship actually works and their attraction to each other…)

Don’t be like those people that say that Spock/Kirk is more progressive than Spock/Uhura will ever be. (Because it’s not like when the original series was on air, when we had so little in the way of canon interracial anything on screen to serve as representation).

Don’t act as though wanting to be excited about a dark-skinned black woman as a lead and also wanting to ship her with her co-star is playing into the patriarchy.

Read More »

[Stitch Likes Villains] Thrawn

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Stitch Likes Villains - Thrawn

If left unchecked, there’s no limit to how many times I’ll bring up Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn (the 2016 novel and its titular character) in a conversation about Star Wars.

Thrawn is hands down my favorite villain in the Star Wars universe and I think he’s an incredibly well-written villain that’s the straight up star of his own set of books. Like I literally wish I could write a villain as good as Thrawn, a character who is interesting and compelling while also frustrating enough to make you want to beat the holy heck out of him.

I’d like to blame my friend Justen for my whole Thrawn… thing. He’s encouraged my Thrawn obsession for the longest time now and he’d be the easiest person to pin my Thrawn-obsession on. Except, that wouldn’t be fair or entirely true. Read More »

Empire State University Stories (A Marvel College AU series)

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Originally published in 2014 on the AO3. This is a college AU for the MCU that was born out of a desire to have more Thor/Ororo and Sam/Steve. It’s still technically in progress, but it’s been YEARS.

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Trip

Ororo nearly falls head over heels for him.

The left heel on Ororo Munroe’s favorite pair of purple stiletto boots snaps on her way down the stairs of her 9AM history class.

Ororo pitches forward, arms windmilling about as she tries to snag hold of anything — or anyone — that can stop her fall, but her fingers slide over the railing on the nearby wall as though it’s not even there and at first glance, it looks like all of her remaining classmates are too far away to be very helpful.

Ororo squeezes her eyes shut in preparation for a painful tumble down the stairs and says a silent prayer of thanks to whatever force in the universe was behind her leaving her laptop back in the dorms.

But then —

Ororo doesn’t fall.Read More »

Stitch Has Lived A Life – 2018 Wrap Up

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2018 sure was a year…

I did a lot of really awesome things, but I’ve also had a really rough year with no sign of it getting better. As I write this, I’m still unemployed and I have no idea when or even if I’ll be able to get health insurance, pay for my wordpress subscription/domain name,  or even buy holiday gifts for my family.

But it hasn’t been all bad.

In 2018, I hit a bunch of personal, professional, and academic milestones.Read More »

Double Booked (A Thor/Ororo Fanfic)

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Originally published on the AO3 May 26, 2014 as part of Unconventional Courtship 2014. Lightly edited to correct spelling/grammar errors.

Double booked

“Who are you?”

After three months of travelling, all Thor Odinson wants to do is sink into his own bed. The last thing he expects is to find a stark-naked woman already there….

Ororo Munroe wasn’t anticipating company either. Thor may be six feet four inches of pure muscle and boast a disturbingly sexy smile, but a fortnight in the South of France is the one thing standing between Ororo and her sanity—and she’s not about to give it up without a fight!

Because Ororo plays to win. The problem? Thor does, too. And with only one bed between them, things are about to get interesting….

Notes: Major thanks to Vonn for looking over this story for me and to my followers and friends on tumblr that put up with me wailing about everything from the ship itself to characterization worries. Based on the book Holiday With a Stranger by Christy McKellen.

Normally, relying on her instincts has always served Ororo Monroe well.

When floorboards in the quiet farmhouse creak in the minutes just after midnight, Ororo awakens instantly. Her eyes widen in the darkness, fear prickling along her spine as her mind immediately goes to the worst possible conclusion when she hears the muted thud of heavy footsteps come from someone making their way through the otherwise empty house.

Young woman all by herself in a secluded house in the middle of nowhere?

Yeah, Ororo’s seen that movie before and didn’t like it then either.

However, Ororo has an advantage. As far as she can remember, none of the poor young women in those horror movies were Omega-level mutants.Read More »

[Book Review] Minimum Wage Magic (DFZ #1) by Rachel Aaron

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Minimum Wage Magic - Cover.jpg

Fantasy writer Rachel Aaron has had one hell of a year in publishing. She’s teamed up with her husband Travis to write Forever Fantasy Online (the first in a trilogy of fantasy novels), published Garrison Girl, an original novel set in the Attack on Titan universe, and opened up the year by releasing the fifth and final book in her amazing Heartstrikers series, Last Dragon Standing.

Her newest release, Minimum Wage Magic, returns to the Heartstrikers series main setting, the Detroit Free Zone (DFZ for short) with a new cast of main characters and a DFZ that is the most stable it’s been in a while. Set twenty years after the original series, this novel revolves around Opal Yong-ae, a freelance mage that works as Cleaner in the city, who fumbles her way into a mystery when she finds the dead body of a mage in one of the apartment she’s supposed to be cleaning.Read More »

Urban Fantasy 101: Definitive-Ish

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Urban fantasy 101_ Definitive Ish.png

Wikipedia’s definition for “urban fantasy” is pretty unhelpful in its broadness.

Basically, it calls urban fantasy “a subgenre of fantasy in which the narrative has an urban setting” and goes on to mention that urban fantasy works are “set primarily in the real world and contain aspects of fantasy”.

It’s definitely a definition, but it’s not exactly an clear one.Read More »

[Stitch Likes Stuff] Jennie – Solo

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I love everything that the girls of Blackpink choose to be and do.

Jennie, one of my two favorite members of the South Korean girl group of my heart, has recently come out with her first single called “Solo”. It is a catchy song and the video is super cute.

If you don’t stan Blackpink, what exactly are you doing with your life?

[Review] A Duke by Default (Reluctant Royals #2) by Alyssa Cole

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A Duke By Default Cover.jpg

I only recently bought Alyssa Cole’s A Duke By Default so I missed out on months of basking in this glorious and delightful novel (because my local library never got around to purchasing it on my request). But I have read this book and it is everything I’d hoped it’d be.

Now, I’m a diehard Alyssa Cole fan. I seriously stan her because she’s a wonderful writer, a fellow Caribbean islander, and she always manages to get me super invested in her characters. She’s another writer that could write a grocery list and have me pleading to read it because it’d be art on scratch paper.

So it can’t be a surprise that I genuinely loved the second book in her Reluctant Royals series, A Duke by Default.Read More »

Stitch Does Stuff in December

Stitch

It’s the end of 2018 and I am so ready for this year to be over. While I’ve had incredible personal, creative, and academic successes this year, it’s also been the longest year I’ve ever lived in my life so far andfull to the brim with stress. But I’m not done just yet.

I’m wrapping up 2018 with a full slate of projects and pieces (in-progress and completed) for my website, Patreon, and maybe a couple of other outlets. This includes my end of the year wrap up post, “Best Books of 2018” lists, and a ton of book reviews for your reading pleasure.

So, let’s get started with my list of things that will be going up on my website and Patreon this final month of 2018!

Read More »

[Video] My Comic Book Girlfriend Has To Be a Redhead: Misogynoiristic Reactions to Racebending Iris West and Mary-Jane Watson

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Abstract Recent adaptations of popular comic book series have taken the step of diversifying their original storylines by racebending (Gaston and Reid 2012) key characters – for example Iris West (played by Candice Patton) on DC Comics and The CW’s The Flash television series and Mary Jane Watson (rumored to be played by Zendaya) in […]