Category: A Catch All

May Wrap Up and June Plans

Stitch

Stitch does stuff in June

Out of all the things I said I’d do in May on this post, I’ve done… most of them? Well, for Patreon at least.

I didn’t get to do the “Worldbuilding Wednesday” post on Secret Societies or the post on Anita Blake #5 (in part because I still haven’t finished rereading it) for Patrons, but I’m going to slide those forward to June.

Aside from that, i finished everything on the Patreon and I’ve decided to scrap the grad school wrap-up in general (I’m uninterested in further commentary on grad school at the moment) and I’ll be posting book reviews and the “Life as a (Semi) Professional Hater” post next month.

So here’s what’s up for June:

Patreon

  • WIP Snippets of: ” Too White Bread for This Shit: Race and Racism in Laurell K Hamilton’s Urban Fantasy Series”, “Urban Fantasy 101: Crime and Punishment”, the Misogynoir post, and WOC in the MCU: Mariah Dillard ($1 Tier)
  • Worldbuilding Wednesday: Secret Societies ($5 Tier)
  • Images for various blog posts ($1 Tier)
  • Great Big Anita Blake Reread: Bloody Bones ($3 Tier)
  • Finished Drafts of the Laurell K Hamilton post and the misogynoir one ($3 Tier)
  • Reapproaching Social Justice and Fandom Racism ($5 Tier)

Blog

  • Life as a (Semi) Professional Hater
  • Untitled Rose and Finn post
  • Where Are Y’all Getting Your Characterization From? Finn Isn’t A Coward, Or Selfish, And He Doesn’t Need A Damn Redemption Arc.
  • Stitch Likes Stuff: Fence
  • Untitled Black Panther/MCU piece on motherhood
  • Book Reviews

While I’m here, if there’s any content that y’all would like to see from me this month (or any other), please let me know! I’m also extra open for writing or editing gigs!

Become a Patron today!

Small Stitch Reviews – Bingo Love

Stitch

Bingo Love Cover

Title: Bingo Love
Creators: Tee Franklin (writer), Jenn St-Onge and Joy San (Art), Genevieve FT (Cover)
Genre: Slice of Life, Queer Romance
Rating: Highly Recommended

Publisher: Image Comics
Publishing Date: February 14, 2018

Preorder on AMAZON!

I can’t settle on just one adjective to describe Tee Franklin’s Bingo Love.

Beautiful.

Sweet.

Heart-breaking.

So many different words apply because in many ways, Bingo Love is the queer comic of my dreams! I signed up to support Tee on Kickstarter the moment that the comic project was announced and I finally got the chance to sit down and read my copy today.

Bingo Love is so good. It’s incredibly powerful to see a story of Black queer love told across decades and you can see just how much work Tee, Jenn, and Joy put into this book. This slice of life graphic novel holds nothing back as it focuses on Mari and Hazel’s relationship with one another across their lives (including both internalized and external societal homophobia). It made me tear up MULTIPLE times because it just hit all of the right emotional notes and that ending — oh!

Seriously, if you haven’t pre-ordered Bingo Love yet, you need get on that right now! Because Bingo Love is one of the best comics I’ve ever read and we should all be excited to see where Tee goes from here!

 

 

 

Supporting Stitch ’s Media Mix

Stitch

Stitch's Media Mix

WHO I AM AND WHAT I DO:

I’m Zina and I’ve been running Stitch’s Media Mix since March 2015. I created my site as a site for fandom and media criticism after being frustrated by my inability to find a safe, welcoming place where I could be a part of these conversations in the fandoms that I already belonged to.

I love being in fandom and I love the act of being a fan, but I feel as though there’s room for improvement that is always being overlooked. I’d love to be able to change certain things about the overarching institution of fandom, but for now, I’ll settle for educating and snarking my way along as I figure out how to bring change to  my main fandoms.

Using my academic background (I have a BA in History and have my my MA in English/Literature) and my experiences as a queer Black person in fandom, I try to tackle the media I consume and the fandom spaces I inhabit from a critical and faintly snarky angle. I use my website to host my writing: media critique, analysis of fandom tropes and trends, book reviews, and the occasional bit of original fiction.

My focus is on talking critically about the media folks create and consume in order to forge a path towards making fandom a more welcoming place for marginalized and underrepresented groups of people.

I want everyone to be able to have a seat at the proverbial table without it being pulled from underneath them.

Read More »

[Essay Series] Looks Like A Cinnamon Roll… – Opening Essay

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Looks Like A Cinnamon Roll...

There’s a part of my brain that can’t believe that this all began because of an overused meme. There’s a part of my brain that’s almost embarrassed that I was able to  build so much content as a result of scrolling through character tags on tumblr and taking in the way that some of my fellow fans were talking about characters of color via the “cinnamon roll” meme.

Pulled from the title of an Onion article turned meme, the “cinnamon roll” in fandom is a character who is literally seen as being too good and too pure for this world. While different people in different sub/fandoms can’t decide on a uniform meaning or usage of the meme, one thing that the meme has come to represent is that the different “cinnamon roll” characters tend not to get the same content as other characters.

Unless they’re designated as a “sinnamon roll” (who is often a problematic character, usually a villain), these characters get “softer” content and they’re typically coddled in the ships fandom does popularize for them.

It’s a meme-turned-trope that should be adorable and sweet because well…

Everyone loves a cinnamon roll.

However, when those characters are characters of color well… it can become a problem.Read More »

Links I Loved – July

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I have returned with another bunch of links that I found interesting, useful, and awesome! This July, much of the reading I did was on intersections of race and sexuality. Several of the articles that I read talk about homophobia and racism and include slurs, particularly the pieces on Lafayette Reynolds and on the Mayweather/Mc Gregor fight. The “White Women in Robes” piece also contains descriptions of sexual and reproductive violence.

Links I Liked - July.png

On ‘Baby Driver’ and black retribution hidden behind white privilege

Baby Driver is a dynamic film supported by tour-de-force editing, wild car chases, inventive cinematography, an eclectic soundtrack (everything from Queen to the Commodores) that carries with it the stale odor of white privilege as its guiding thematic principal that allows it to show a white male criminal character, complicit in vicious murders of law enforcement,large-scale robberies, carjacking and property damage, receive a light sentence and get paroled into the waiting arms of his beloved girlfriend.

“The Keeping Room” Succeeds Where Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled” Fails (This essay contains descriptions of sexual assault.)

Sofia Coppola’s newest film and remake of The Beguiled sets itself apart from both the 1966 novel and the 1971 original film adaptation in terms of style and tenor, but carries the same themes of solitude and fear. Most significantly, it brazenly disrespects its original source material and the history that it drew from by removing an enslaved Black woman, Hallie, from a narrative about women in the Confederate South during the Civil War.

Read More »

Giveaway Result Placeholder

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I was supposed to announced the giveaway winner yesterday along with posting the next giveaway but life is happening too fast. I’m basically back to work and stuck balancing a ton of coursework due like…now. Argh.

Once I finish responding to the last two comments on the post, I’ll announce the winner on this one. There is a huge chance that that will be on Friday.

I’m also…  Not doing another giveaway so soon after the first. I love doing giveaways and they’re fun, but they’re also disheartening for me because of reasons. They’re also expensive… I need to pause on the love train until I can do another guilt free giveaway.

ETA (like two weeks later): My giveaway winner is

*cue drumroll*

DIANA!

Whoo!

(Also, my next giveaway will be sooner than I expected because I have movie codes for two much loved films from last year which are the PERFECT things to giveaway because I already own them and can easily get them to my winners! Stay tuned for more awesomeness and thanks for playing!)

Let’s Talk About “Alice”: The Fragility of White Womanhood in Grad School Spaces

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AKA “There’s a fragile white woman in my class who doesn’t seem to handle criticism very well and we’re probably going to fight by the end of the semester… or next week”.

There’s this woman in my Wednesday night grad school course who is going to hate me by the end of the semester if she doesn’t already.

Let’s call her Alice.

Alice has had some bad opinions over the past two weeks of our classes. Near the end of our first class after I’d already given this passionate defense of audiobooks as another valid way of reading, Alice looked me dead in the face and said “No offense, but… I still don’t think audiobooks count as reading.”

I let it slide because it was the first class of the semester and her first literature class. I told myself that Alice would be better the next class.

Alice was not better the next class.Read More »

Radioplay Day Update: Superman vs the Clan of the Fiery Cross

Stitch

Okay so it’s been a long time since our last Radioplay Day, but I haven’t forgotten about my desire to go through “Superman and the Clan of the Fiery Cross” with y’all.

Once finals are done and I’ve got my freelancing schedule on lock, I’ll get back on track and start putting up the posts for the episodes I’ve listened to by then.

Heck, maybe I’ll take some time off during Thanksgiving break to power through the first three or four episodes and read the book that Richard Bowers wrote on the subject (Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate).

But for the time being, please check out this clip from Drunk History’s “Atlanta” episode which is a brief look at how Superman played a rather important part in undermining the authority and influence of the Klan.

(I recommend the entire episode because it’s hilarious and the first person to drunkenly retell history is the adorable Jenny Slate fumbling through a history of Coca Cola’s invention.)

See you soon with a full post!

bib·li·o·file: Recent Work in Literary Studies

Stitch

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Here’s everything we’re reading in my Monday night class from now until the end of the semester. Sadly, none of these books are available for free so all I can offer are (affiliate) links to the kindle version on Amazon which is what I’m using for class.

Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting  by Sianne Ngai

Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Posthumanities) by Timothy Morton

Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network by Caroline Levine

Slavery and the Culture of Taste by Simon Gikandi

The Limits of Critique by Rita Felski

Loving Literature: A Cultural History by Deidre Shauna Lynch

A bonus is the book I’m using for my second assignment and one that I never pass up the chance to make obnoxious noises about: Glen Weldon’s The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture.

Once I get my syllabi and books for my other two classes, I’ll put up posts for them. Right now though, I’m just really pleased with the reading list for this class!

Elektra steals the show in this second trailer for Netflix’s Daredevil Season 2

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Elodie Yung is going to own the role of Elektra. Seriously, watching the new trailer for Netflix and Marvel’s second season of Daredevil gives me all of the feels.

Elektra is a character that’s been criminally underused over the years and has existed in a nigh perpetual stasis in the same time. Frank Miller killed her off ages ago, but she’s really never had the chance for rebirth the way that some many (male) characters have had.

So seeing her onscreen and fighting alongside Matt is wonderful! We had some great female characters last season,  but you can always use more. Also,  I’m still pretty sure the show has yet to pass the Bechdel Test as it’s used so I’m hoping that it’ll do better on that front and not only have the female characters in Daredevil interact with one another, but for them to do so without dealing with them only talking about the men in their respective lives.Read More »

Five things that I learned during the “Year of the Spy”

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Sometimes, when it’s very quiet and I close my eyes, I swear that I can hear the brazen, brassy tones of the James Bond theme song playing in the silence. At first, it was a bit worrying. But now, I’m kind of used to it. It’s all part and parcel of what comes with diving headfirst into “The Year of the Spy”.

I’m not sure how this happened, but 2015 officially became “The Year of the Spy” thanks to several major blockbusters, comics, and shows that centered around international espionage. If there were spies in it, chances are that I watched it, read it, and generally was obnoxious about it on twitter. I couldn’t help myself.

It’s been a long year of spies and immersing myself in almost everything to do with this genre of fiction. I’ve learned and noticed a lot. Much of it was… kind of negative, but there were a few standouts.

So instead of giving y’all a twenty thousand word recap of my year of the spy, I’ve written up five things I’ve learned or had reaffirmed over my year being ridiculously invested in all things spy-related!

Read More »

[Review] Six-Gun Gorilla: Long Days of Vengeance

Stitch

Six Gun Gorilla Cover

Writer: Brian Christgau

Artist: Adrián Sibar

Letters: Bram Meehan and Dave Sharpe

Support the creators and get the comic on: COMIXOLOGY | AMAZON (Link to the first issue only) | KICKSTARTER

Note: Brian Christgau provided me with this review comic. The thoughts expressed in this post are entirely my own (obviously because who else would write an intense ode to a fictional gorilla?) and are honest representations of my opinions.

There’s something cathartic about watching a gorilla shoot the hell out of bad guys.

When I was trying to describe Six Gun Gorilla‘s premise to one of my friends, I wound up saying that it was something close to what you’d get if the long dead Edgar Rice Burroughs and Quentin Tarantino had a baby and if that baby was cooler than its parents while also being a gorilla.

As far as descriptions go, it’s a bit nonsensical, but it’s also what makes Six Gun Gorilla my kind of comic book. It’s a comic set in the American West during the times of cowboys and cattle rustlers and there’s also a gorilla running around blowing people’s heads off.

I’m sorry, was I supposed to refrain from falling in love with this ridiculously awesome comic?Read More »

The Kelpie in the Canal – Now Up On Patreon

Stitch

The Kelpie in the Canal.png

At first, when Danae sees the horse in the canal, she thinks that she’s dreaming.

This is one of the stories that is going to show up in my fantasy collection sometime in the early parts of next year. Set in South Florida, along the same stretch of road that I would walk along when coming home from student teaching, this story is set to be humorous with an edge of intensity.

Hope you all enjoy reading the story!

 

This story is available only to monthly Patreon subscribers at the $5 level for anyone interested in reading the story and supporting me in my endeavors as a writer. It comes in .PDF, .MOBI, and .EPUB formats so that you can read on whatever device you want!

Wish me luck!

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Today I’m going down to Miami in order to make the sort of academic decision that’ll move me forward on my goals. I’m being vague now because I’m terrified but please wish me all the luck in making a good choice!