You can now support Stitch’s Media Mix on Patreon!

Patreon Header

If you’ve ever wanted to support me as a writer but wasn’t sure where to begin, look no further than at my newly created Patreon page.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Patreon, it kind of serves as a way to “tip” creators that you like and kind of support them as they work on creating the content that you love to read.

Prior to writing for my blog Stitch’s Media Mix and Word of the Nerd, I wrote for The Mary Sue.

I had a weekly column on James Bond and a lot of super cool people really enjoyed my comments on representation in the film franchise’s long history. (Seriously, I was getting comments from really amazing authors and other cool people from different industries who all really liked what I brought to the table in terms of pop culture analysis.) I’m also technically a published author with a flash fiction piece in Fireside Fiction’s August 3rd issue.

So, why should you support me on Patreon?

Because you like what I’m writing and you want more. Because you see potential in me as a writer. Because my snarky looks at fandom and media interest you or crack you up. Because you want early access to stories and articles that I write and the chance to give feedback before anyone else does.

If you’re supporting me on Patreon, it’s because you want to see more of me.

Either you’ve been following me on various social media and/or writing sites for a while or you’re new to my blog but like what you’ve seen so far. Either way, it’d mean a lot to me.

Right now, much of what I write is done for free. I do it because I love it, but many of the places that I post my work aren’t exactly paying venues /opportunities just yet.  Which is… not the best for my bank account, you understand.

Supporting me on Patreon supports new content from me on my main blog.  Right now, I’m working on several  projects that require a ton of research materials and time. First, is my main project that looks at fandom and race and the community’s failings in that regard as well as the ways that we can do better and do more. I’m also working on a similar project titled Urban Fantasy 101 that focuses on issues within the genre and offers tips to fix them, conversations on turning tropes on their heads, and recs to good books that go against the genre’s conventions.

I’m also planning on writing about superheroes. I mean, I’m always writing about superheroes, but I want to look at heroes and villains and how they’re perceived and how they influence us. I have a few essays in progress on comic book history that are on hold for a special (and SECRET) project and some introspective pieces on hard topics like mental illness and trauma in comics that I’m working on as well.

I’m also writing short stories. My goal is to get enough fantasy stories written and collected to self-publish a collection of them on Amazon. I have several written already and have a list of stories that I’m tackling every chance that I get. (You can read examples of my work here!)

If you support me on Patreon, I’ll give early access to stories and articles (there are tiers for that). At the highest level you’ll also get the opportunity to suggest topics for voting and there will be other perks and rewards as time goes on. There’s a lot that’s planned and having a bit of a cushion so that I can explore these avenues would be lovely.

Thank you so much for reading this and please, if you can’t spare any financial support, sharing is definitely caring!

[Film Review & Recap] Spectre

Here you have it, almost 5000 words on Spectre that looks at the film’s plot, its shortcomings, and my expectations for the film. All of the photographs in this monster baby of a post come from antovolk‘s trailer screencaps on flickr .

James-Bond-Spectre-Poster

It feels like almost everything I’ve done has led up to this point.

For me (and many fans), 2015 was the year of the spy. I’ve seen most of the spy films and television shows that came out this year and of course, I spent most of my year watching and rewatching James Bond films so that I could write my column over at The Mary Sue. From Dr. No to Skyfall (with a few unofficial films along the way), I made my way through every single James Bond film made between 1962 and now. Most of these movies I watched a minimum of three times. Others? Yeah, I went way overboard.

I think that after a year of spy comics, movies, and shows, it was inevitable for Spectre to fall short of the hype that I had built up, a crashing force of momentum born from the moment that they announced the title of the film. I’ve spent close to a year of my life eating, breathing, and dreaming about James Bond. I may be behind on Fleming’s original canon, but I am nearly one with Eon Production’s slightly softer canon.

Here’s the thing though: maybe all of that time worked against me. Maybe I was destined not to completely enjoy Spectre because it had been built up to Leviathan-like proportions in my head thanks to this year. I don’t know. What I do know is that I saw Spectre twice – first on November 7th with my Skyfall partner Rob and then on the following Tuesday with my trusty notebook – and it has yet to move me the way that Skyfall did.

It isn’t that Spectre is a bad movie. It’s not. It’s full of lush scenery and pretty people and the most brutal fight scenes. Craig is a good Bond and I’ve got to admit that even his least popular Bond film (coughcoughQuantumOfSolacecoughcough) is better than like ninety percent of the worst Bond films out there.

Spectre is almost entirely my thing.

Except for where it’s not.Read More »

#FlashbackFriday – Stitch takes on the #JamesBond & #00q fandoms

To be fair, when I open a video talking about fandom sucking, it’s easy to understand why I’m not more popular in fandom spaces. I’m not necessarily nice about certain things, but then —

I don’t have to be.

Three years ago, the James Bond fandom let me down big time with how their immediate response to Skyfall was to ship James Bond with basically everyone but Naomie Harris’ Eve Moneypenny. She often wound up pushed to the side as an ex or as a sassy Black British friend who hooked the two nubs up and made them see the light.

So of course, I got pissed. Because this sort of thing isn’t okay.

It doesn’t matter what you ship, but rather how you ship it. 00q isn’t an inherently problematic ship, but the fandom that focuses on him and Bond at the expense of female characters and characters of color?

They’re plenty problematic.

The response to this video (on tumblr at least) was so harsh that I deleted the posts I made without saving them and I basically dropped out of interacting with the fandom. I’m sorry but when you get called ‘homophobic’ for criticizing (not disliking, mind you) a fanon ship, you know things are a bit borked.

I’m posting this #FlashbackFriday video to show how little fandom has changed as an institution. We can do better, but let’s be real: it’s a lot easier not to.

Slash Shipping, Pseudo-Progressivism, and Reinforcing Patriarchal Standards in Fandom

disproportionateHere’s a newsflash for you my fellow slash shippers: Your male/male ships that focus almost exclusively on white men aren’t as progressive or as rebellious as you think they are.

Especially when (not ‘if’) they come at the expense of women and characters of color who have significant intimate relationships with one or both of the two white guys you’re shipping.
Read More »

Late Last Night – Helena Bertinelli/Eve Moneypenny

Title: Late Last Night

Characters: future Helena Bertinelli/Eve Moneypenny with mentions of Dick Grayson, James Bond, Q, and The Tiger King of Kandahar

Rating: General

Contains: Flirting, subtle but significant spoilers for Spectre, Grayson #4, and Batman and Robin Eternal #2.

Summary: There are few secrets among spies.

Notes: Instead of writing the Spectre review I took 12 pages of notes for this morning while I was in the theater, I just sat down and wrote a story about two of the most powerful Black women in the spy genre (James Bond‘s Eve Moneypenny and Grayson‘s Helena Bertinelli) having a friendship and maybe (eventually) a little something more. If you squint, there are definite allusions to Moneypenny/Q/Bond and Helena/Dick too. Because that’s how I roll.


There are no secrets in SPYRAL.

Not even for its current director.

No – especially for its current director.Read More »

[Book Review] Sorcerer To The Crown by Zen Cho

Sorcerer to the Crown CoverTitle: Sorcerer to the Crown
Author: Zen Cho (Twitter)
Rating:
Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Historical Fantasy, AWESOME
Release Date: September 1, 2015
Publisher: Ace

Purchase Links: AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE


I have basically been on the library waiting list for Zen Cho’s Sorcerer To The Crown since it came out. I finally got to get it from the library on one of my recent Library Hauls and yesterday, in between writing sessions, I read the entire thing.

I wanted to tweet about it yesterday and give Zen Cho props from then, but I paused because I wanted to do it right and review it as best as possible (without many spoilers because I know there are people who read my reviews who haven’t read it yet).

So let’s get the most important thing out of the way: I love this book. (Like for real, if I could marry a book I’d be in a poly relationship with Sorcerer to the Crown and Matt Wallace’s Envy of Angels.) Read More »

The Techniques of Erasure

Word Cloud - Techniques of Erasure

This is part one of a hybrid essay-rant series focusing on fandom (the collective community) and its intense race/racism problems. If you’re new to my blog and to this project, start here with the introduction post. Make sure to click the links and read the content because they’ll add further nuance to the essay here.

In addition to talking about race and racism, this post also mentions incest (with regard to how fandom interprets familial relationships to suit their shipping needs).


One thing that becomes overwhelmingly clear when it comes to the treatment of characters of color is the lengths that fandom is willing to go to in order to get them out of the way of their favorite white character ships. There are so many techniques that we could tackle, many of them framed subtly enough that it’s difficult to combat them, but for the purposes of this post we’re going to look at five of the most popular:

  1. Distancing
  2. Willful misinterpretation of relationships
  3. Theorizing that a character of color is really evil (and therefore shouldn’t be shipped/the relationship should be placed under suspicion)
  4. Deciding that a character of color in a POC/White Fandom Darling ship is actually asexual and/or a “strong [race/ethnicity] man/woman/non-binary person that don’t need no significant other”
  5. POC reduced to an agony aunt character to get white characters together

Read More »

The Insomniac – Flash Fiction

The Insomniac - Title Card

Malik wishes for sleep. Instead, he receives company and a command from his most confusing housemate.


Malik can’t bring himself to go back to bed – back to the place where dark thoughts and waking nightmares burst into reality in the less than pleasant darkness of his room. Instead, the djinn walks the short distance from his room to the common area that he shares with his housemates.Read More »

Library Haul 11/02/2015

wpid-20151102_213136.jpgYesterday was my second attempt at getting the books I need for my story. I actually got a lot of good books for research day part two and a couple of books that are just for fun.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that my story will be superficially similar to Crimson Peak because it’s basically the thing I’m obsessed with. And I liked the feel of the film so much– gosh.

My planned pair of siblings (The Darlings) are messed up in different ways though and my heroine is a woman of color who is immediately suspicious of the duo.

What’s been fun is that in this early part of the planning stage it’s still something I can talk about with my nieces so we’ve been talking a bit about racism and we’re brainstorming monsters and what makes people monstrous. Normally, I can’t really involve them in the writing process because they’re still so little, but since I haven’t actually decided what I’m doing with the plot and I don’t have to skip over any sexual stuff just yet, we’ve been having a blast!

I’m having a ton of fun with research and taking down notes. I can’t wait to sit down and do more of the actual writing.

Now if you’re here, you’re here for the book info so let’s get into that!


Read More »

Fandom. you’ve got a huge race problem — An Introduction Post

poc in fandom image

Sam Wilson. Abigail Mills. James “Rhodey” Rhodes. Eve Moneypenny . Joan Watson.

What do these characters all have in common?

Well, they’re all characters of color in popular films or television shows.

They’re all shippable with fandom’s white dude darlings (Steve Rogers, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes for example).

And oh yeah –

Fandom constantly desexualizes them and removes them as valid canon or fanon love interests for said white dude darlings so that a white character can swoop in and fandom can have fantastic ships.

Let’s face it: fandom has a major racism problem.

The clearest sign of this is how characters of color and the fans that defend them are treated.

Fandom, we need to do better. We need to talk about the fact that there’s no balance. We need to talk about how either fandom is hypersexualizing characters of color or desexualizing them.

We also need to talk about how fans and characters of color do not get treated well in fandom and yet it keeps getting glossed over as if it’s not a sign of serious racism in fandom. Reduced to drama or ship wars, discussions about the methods that fandom undertakes to deliberately distance characters of color from white characters (either with regard to friendships or romantic relationships) are frequently pushed to the side.

Whenever someone makes a post or writes an article about the way that fandom pushes these fans and characters to the sidelines, it rarely goes well.

I know this for a fact. I’ve written my fair share of those posts and the negative responses have been both intense and immediate.

Even on my previous posts about fandom’s racism problems, I’ve gotten dismissed by people who otherwise seem like they’re great. I’ve had nasty messages sent to my inbox. Fandom friendships have suffered. After a while, you get labeled as a trouble maker because fandom is supposed to be this carefree place where oppression is ignored unless it’s that of actually diverse fictional characters and the fans wanting representation to carry over to the fandom.

Despite that, I’m not going to keep quiet about it.

I’m here to talk about this racism problem in detail by using different fandoms and ships as examples along with my personal experiences and those of fellow fans.

For the next five months, we’ll be looking at how fandom mistreats and misuses characters of color and how fandom spaces tend not to be so safe for fans of color who are vocally uncomfortable with this treatment.
Read More »

[Book Review] Ghosts and Girls of Fiction House

ghosts and girls of fiction houseTitle: Ghosts and Girls of Fiction House
Author:
Various authors, collected & edited by Michael Price
Rating:
Highly Recommended
Genre/Category: Comic books, Horror, History
Release Date: November 10, 2015

Publisher: IDW Publishing

Pre-Order Here: AMAZON | IDW PUBLISHING | BARNES AND NOBLE

Blurb: The publisher Fiction House was infamous for what anti-comics crusader Dr. Fredric Wertham called “headlight comics,” i.e. comics featuring the ample female bosom. The Pre-Code publisher used their buxom heroines to star in jungle comics, science fiction tales, and scary GHOST STORIES! The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics series curates the sexiest and scariest of these poltergeist-infused Good Girl Art comics in a pulse-pounding tome, Ghosts and Girls! Your hair will stand on end and at the same time your toes will curl! Featuring faithfully reprinted original art from these 1940s and 1950s by brilliant masters Matt Baker, Maurice Whitman, and more, don’t miss this must-have, large format collection edited by comics historian and filmmaker Michael Price, with its lovingly restored comics.


** This early and honest review was made possible by Diamond Book Distributors, IDW Publishing, and NetGalley. The (somewhat lengthy) opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. **

I’m a sucker for a good ghost story and Ghosts and Girls of Fiction House provides more than enough to satisfy me.

Collected by Michael Price, the Golden-Age tales of horror and humanity in Ghosts and Girls of Fiction House are right up my alley. The stories in this book all come from publisher Fiction House, a publisher known for their images of beautiful women in peril and blood-curdling horror.  With about two-hundred pages of comic book history (including anecdotes about horror comics’ hall of famer EC Gaines), covers for comics like Ghost and Jumbo Comics, and full-color reprints of true Golden Age greats, this book is a must have for fans of horror who are fascinated by comic book culture and history.Read More »

Snippet – Saw Palmetto Sacrifice Chapter 1

With all the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance I read, I think it makes sense for me to tackle the genre and try to put my own spin on it. Saw Palmetto Sacrifice is what happens when I look at what I don’t like about the two genres (ceaseless heteronormativity, skimpy representation of characters of color, and cultural appropriation as the main offenders) and try to subvert the genres’ most frustrating tropes and themes.

It’s kind of on a break for now as the Gothic Romance project and my freelance writing take the front seat, but I’m so very fond of it. So this snippet comes from the first chapter and gets us into Alex’s head.

Enjoy!


Read More »