Category: Stitch Elsewhere

The Stitch is on Patreon: Take Two

Stitch

Patreon Banner

You’ve heard it here folks, I’m giving Patreon a second try!

This time, I have a schedule planned out for the next twelve months and a snazzy (if silly) video that talks about who I am and what I hope to get from Patreon.

If you like the content I’m creating and want to help make it possible for me to make more without worrying about how I’m going to eat or pay bills, please feel free to check out (and subscribe to) my Patreon and share with any interested friends or followers!

The Stitch on Patreon!

 

[Video] PCAACA 2017 Wrap-Up

Video Stitch

So I got back from PCA this morning at the butt crack of dawn and between being sick all day and my usual anxiety, it took me a while to get this up. (This is still way faster than I’ve done anything else this semester so… I’m taking this as a win.) This wrap-up and […]

[Stitch Elsewhere] Luke Cage review @ Strange Horizons

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Marvel’s Luke Cage looks at trauma from an intersectional point of view—one which doesn’t center whiteness or stereotypes of Black masculinity.

After eight years, fourteen feature-length films, and four separate television series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally managed to place a Black man front and center in his own narrative. Luke Cage, a character previously seen as a supporting character in the first season of the Netflix-exclusive series Marvel’s Jessica Jones, is the first Black character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to star in their own series rather than remain a poorly-fleshed out sidekick to a white character.

Marvel’s Luke Cage is one of the only series out on television today that provides a close and realistic look at what it means to be a Black person in a world of superheroes. The series’ significant focus on agency, trauma, power, and personhood as they relate to Black bodies—as well as its portrayal of powerful, multi-faceted Black women like Mariah Stokes, Misty Knight, and Claire Temple—puts it above and beyond the very white superhero television and film franchises that dominate the media.

I wrote this piece on Marvel’s Luke Cage series for Strange Horizons and I’m really proud of it!

I got to talk a lot about the role power and agency play in the series, how Jessica Jones really had issues with antiblackness, and how Luke Cage matters as significant representation both to us in the real world and within the MCU.

I’m really grateful that Strange Horizons gave me the chance to write this piece and I think that if you read nothing else from me, that you should read this because a lot of work went into it and I feel that it comprehensively covers the things that Luke Cage did right and how important the show is.

Read the post here on the Strange Horizons website!

How my island upbringing inspired “The Carnival That Comes After”

Stitch

Undercities Kickstarter Banner.jpg

This is a little backstory post about my story “The Carnival That Comes After” in Dirty Birds Press‘ Undercities anthology which has two weeks left on its Kickstarter campaign. (So go pledge!)

When I was a wee teenager, my mother would go shopping at this one mall and she’d leave me in the bookstore for hours. I’d dive right into the romance and urban fantasy genres, pouring over books that I probably shouldn’t have read (but were still more appropriate than Anne Rice’s everything or Flowers in the Attic).

One of my earliest memories of this period in my life is reading this ridiculous selkie romance novel. I can’t remember anything about the book except that it was historical fantasy set on an island off the coast of Scotland and had a gorgeous, red-haired woman on the cover, but I think that was the book that sparked my special-interest in selkies.

Boy do I love selkies.Read More »

Stitch on Fansplaining’s Two-Part Episode About Race and Fandom!

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Earlier this week I got a chance to participate in an episode of fandom podcast Fansplaining that was all about race/racism in fandom and giving people of color a chance to speak about what they’d witnessed and experienced. It was amazing!

First, the cool content:

Fansplaining Episode 22A

In “Race and Fandom Part 1,” Flourish and Elizabeth follow up on the last episode’s questions about the impact of racism in the Star Wars fandom—and how it’s a microcosm of fandom at large. They interview Rukmini Pande and Clio, and they hear clips from Holly Quinn, Shadowkeeper, and PJ Punla. Topics covered include the historical presence of fans of color, space nazis, femslash and its discontents, and the Filipino perspective on the whiteness of media.

(Show notes!)

Fansplaining Episode 22B

In the second and final installment of our “Race and Fandom” episodes, fans of color continue to speak about their experiences in fandom. Elizabeth and Flourish interview Jeffrey Lyles and Zina (@stitchmediamix), then hear clips from Roz (@rozf), Traci-Anne, and zvi LikesTV (@zvilikestv). Topics covered include being Black and Jewish, Star Wars weddings, cosplaying characters of color, and why kink is never divorced from the real world.

(Show notes)

Under the cut is a bit of backstory (copied largely from some DMs I sent earlier in the week) about what sparked this anger at fandom (for me and several of the contributors this episode):Read More »

Comic Review – Clean Room #2

Stitch

 

Clean Room #2 Cover

Writer: Gail Simone

Art: Jon Davis-Hunt

Letters: Todd Klein

Publisher: Vertigo Comics

Release Date: November 18, 2015

Last month, Gail Simone and Jon Davis-Hunt started spinning a tangled web of psychological horror in Clean Room #1. This month, we get the second issue and things are so intense. From the start, I was turning pages with trepidation, unsure what I’d see in the next page and a bit frightened of what would come next. Tension ramps up higher and higher and higher until you’re just as anxious as Chloe is throughout the book.

In Clean Room #2, Astrid Mueller takes Chloe and the captive comic reader audience into the Clean Room and well –

It’s messed up. So messed up that I’m still not quite sure what I’ve read.

For the rest of this review (which gives the comic full marks and talks in-depth about how creeped out I am by the issue and full of speculation for the future), head to where the review is hosted over at Word of the Nerd!

Comic Review – Gotham Academy #11

Stitch
  • Gotham Academy 11 - CoverWriters: Becky Cloonan & Brenden Fletcher
  • Art: Karl Kerschl with MSASSYK and Mingjue Helen Chen
  • Colors: Serge LaPointe & MSASSYK
  • Letters: Marilyn Patrizio
  • Publisher: DC Comics
  • Release Date: October 21, 2015

Last month, Gotham Academy #10 got downright Shakespearean when the search for the mysterious Calamity saw Olive Silverlock, Maps Mizoguchi, and the rest of the Gotham Academy gang of intrepid teen detectives placed right in the middle of Macbeth and Clayface’s vendetta against the school’s drama teacher Simon Trent.

This month in Gotham Academy #11, the gang heads off campus to Gotham City proper in search for the truth about Olive’s mother and the connection with the costumed villain Calamity. Oh yeah, and there’s a guest appearance by Red Robin (Tim Drake) because cameos by the Batfamily are always welcome!

For the rest of this review (and my first with Word of the Nerd!!), head on over to the site to check it out!

Comic Review – Gotham Academy #11 @ Word of the Nerd

Bond Girl: Octopussy

Stitch

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This week’s Bond Girl post is about the awkwardly-named Octopussy. 

Here’s an excerpt:

I love how take-charge Octopussy is in this. She’s powerful in this film, her gang of smugglers immense enough to fill an entire palace. I think that while her character is superficially similar to that of Pussy Galore, she gets to do more. She’s not just a smuggler.

She takes care of the women that come to her and has an empire built up that has many avenues for them to be successful. These avenues range from owning hotels to carnivals and her famous circus. After the death of her father – a man that Bond went after on orders from his superiors for stealing gold – she turned what could’ve been a chance to spend her life trying to get revenge into a successful life that has her as a powerful, wealthy, and feared name in the world. She made smuggling her profession and proved that crime really does pay if you’re good at it.

If you liked this and want to read more about what I liked , check out Bond Girl: Re-Watching and Re-Evaluating Octopussy on The Mary Sue site! And comment (if you want) or feel free to chat me up on Twitter about everyone’s slightly sleazy favorite man of international espionage!

Bond Girl: For Your Eyes Only

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This week’s Bond Girl post focuses on the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. Here’s an excerpt: For Your Eyes Only isn’t like that and that’s surprising. This is the twelfth Eon Productions Bond film and Roger Moore’s fifth. Like the two films before it, it pulls from different sources and doesn’t have one Fleming […]

Bond Girl: Moonraker

Stitch

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This week’s Bond Girl recap was about the strangely unsatisfying Moonraker.

This movie is just very derivative for me and it’s not a good feeling because James Bond movies are two hours long.

Two hours are a lot of time to spend watching overused tropes in a plot that we basically explored in the last movie. This is honestly the first of Moore’s movies where I kept checking the clock and hoping that it was almost over because it was in turns boring and annoying.

How is this one of the highest grossing Bond films?

To read more, head on over to The Mary Sue for Bond Girl: Re-Watching and Re-Evaluating and give it a read. There you’ll find snark, complaining about the major holes in the villain’s master plan, and the odd historical reference.

Feel free to comment too (because that would be awesome!!).

And as always,  come and talk my ear off about James Bond movies over on twitter!

Bond Girl: The Spy Who Loved Me

Stitch

bond-and-amasova

This might be my favorite James Bond movie.

At the very least, it’s definitely one of the best Bond movies in Roger Moore’s run.

It definitely has my favorite Bond villain and one of the most amazing Bond girls in the entire franchise. It also has the best shark-related scene in the franchise – a scene that blows the one from Thunderball out of the water.

The Spy Who Loved Me is the tenth film in Eon Production’s James Bond series and Roger Moore’s third film in the franchise. The only thing it has in common with Fleming’s original novel is the title and perhaps a few henchmen made larger than life for the film. The Spy Who Loved Me has a storyline that involves billionaire megalomaniac Karl Stromberg (Curd Jürgens), who plans to destroy the world and create a new and perfect world under the sea. Of course, a plan that strange can’t be allowed to stand and so James Bond teams up with Russian agent Major Anya Amasova/Agent Triple X (Barbara Bach) to take him down.

To read more, head on over to The Mary Sue for Bond Girl: Re-Watching and Re-Evaluating The Spy Who Loved Me and feel free to talk my ear off about James Bond movies over on twitter!

Ranking Bond: Sean Connery

Stitch

Content Warnings For: racism, sexism, sexual assault as “seduction”, implied violence against women

Sean Connery was in six of twenty three official James Bond films and originated the role. Charming and often brutish, he exemplified Fleming’s superspy and made it hard for any other Bond actor to measure up. Over the past two months, I’ve had a lot of time to get reacquainted with Sean Connery’s Bond. There’ve been movies that I loved and movies that I hated and what better way to get the point across is there than to use a list.

This was super hard because there weren’t any of his movies that I outright hated. Most of his movies were good aside from a few things that pissed me off and so I’ve had one hell of a hard time putting them in order.

So here’s my ranking for Sean Connery’s Bond movies with a focus on the good, the bad, and the moments that made me go “what the heck is going on here”.

Read More »

Bond Girl: Diamonds Are Forever

Stitch

bond_and_blofeld

Hey it’s Monday night and that means my next Bond Girl piece has gone up on TheMarySue!

If you like James Bond, my grouching about media, or the chance to revisit old-school film franchises, consider checking out this week’s review where I try to send Sean Connery off in the best way.

Check out an excerpt here:

I’m going to miss Sean Connery’s Bond showing up in the Eon Production films, but Diamonds Are Forever is basically the best movie on which to send him out. It exemplifies all the good and bad about Connery’s Bond films and the franchise as a whole. I definitely lost track of how many times I watched the film, but it was definitely worth it.

Diamonds Are Forever is the seventh film in the franchise and Sean Connery’s sixth showing in the role of James Bond. The film focuses on Bond’s attempts at sniffing out and then stopping a diamond smuggling ring that is connected to Blofeld and SPECTRE. It’s up to Bond to stop Blofeld from using the smuggled diamonds in the creation of a massive laser set to destroy major cities in the world. It’s the kind of over-the-top, cartoonish plot that should seem ridiculous, but it works for me.

If you liked that and want more, head on over to the full piece!:

Bond Girl: Re-Watching and Re-Evaluating Diamonds Are Forever

Feel free to tweet me or comment with your thoughts! And hey, stay posted for a special list where I rank Sean Connery’s official James Bond appearances and talk about the good, the bad, and the WTF-ery inherent in his films!

Bond Girl – Week Two

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Whoa!

I’m still going strong with these pieces! This week, I look at From Russia With Love,. Unfortunately, this happens to be my least favorite Bond movie so far.

Excerpt:

It only took five minutes in my very first rewatch to make me uncomfortable and that’s important, because from those five minutes on, I wasn’t able to enjoy the film the way I wanted to. I watched Dr. No about eight times before I got sick of it. From Russia with Love took half as many rewatches.

From Russia With Love is the second James Bond film, and it’s based on the fifth novel in Fleming’s Bond series. The film focuses on two main plots: first, we have the far reaching arms of SPECTRE plotting to both steal a specific cryptographic device from (and then sell it back to0 the Soviet government; then, we have one of SPECTRE’s top agents developing a way to get revenge on Bond and MI6 for the events shown in Dr. No via a complicated mix of scandal and murder. It’s more focused on political intrigue than the previous film (which I feel focused more on terrorism than on espionage); here, we have Bond and his allies in a country that isn’t exactly friendly to them, and in the middle of an issue that could end with MI6′s reputation being dragged through the mud.

I’m going to be honest: From Russia With Love alternately bored and annoyed me. The high points of the film were the political parts and the fight scenes, but there was so much more that I either felt uncomfortable with or that straight up made me angry.

If that piqued your interest, feel free to check out Bond Girl: Re-Watching and Re-Evaluating From Russia With Love over on TheMarySue and say nice things about it either there or by messaging me on twitter! (Or you know, you can totally disagree with me and share your thoughts about that! I’m open to discussion!!)