Category: Stitch Offline

A Brief Tribute To My Dad

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I liked to tell people that my dad was a month older than Batman. This is both true – Batman’s first appearance was in Detective Comics Number 27 in May 1939, a month after his birth – and relevant – one of my earliest and most formative memories of my dad was of watching reruns of the 1960s batman series with him after he got me from school. This help set me on a path to where I’ve interviewed multiple DC Comics actors and creators, and did my thesis on a core Batman character.

I bring up this Batman connection because it speaks to how blessed I have been. My dad made room for me to exist as myself. My dad always made time for me. We watched TV together, talked politics and baseball together, and of course got into cowboys.

Everything I am, that I love, and that I create can be traced back to my time with my dad. His support was endless. while his loss has me feeling a little lost on my own, I’m prepared to continue living a life he would be proud of. Rest well Daddy, you did a good job.

It’s a HAUL!

Stitch

Several weeks ago, Tiny T and I spent an hour going over Wish.com and Aliexpress looking for cute and cheap things just to experiment with the platforms. Here are some of the results!

Post PCA 2019 Analysis

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Post PCA 2019 Analysis.png

Off-hand, I have a list of a few words that I think apply to my experience at PCA 2019

Community

Validation

Cannibalism

Expensive

First of all, while I was surprised that folks in fan-studies gave two shiny cents about me when I was at PCA back in 2017, that was nothing compared to this year.

Y’all. I had meetings (like two, but still). I have a mentor. People were happy to see me and wanted to see more of me as a person and as a fan-studies person. Hell, I went to a panel on k-pop (more on that in a minute) and when I was poking holes in the one panelist’s argument, there were several people in the audience who referred to me by name and like…I’m just gonna believe that they all knew me beforehand and didn’t read my nametag beforehand.

Then, the validation.

Generally, the reaction I get to my work on fandom racism and racism in media… isn’t great. If it’s not coming from my friends and followers, there’s a huge chance that it’ll be antagonistic and unkind. (Like I detail in this thread.)

Coming to PCA and having people not just excited for my work, but excited to see what else I’m planning on was amazing. People told me that they reference my work in their work or use it as an example of accessible academic writing (that was Kathy Larsen, in the Future of Fan Studies Publishing panel).

Multiple people told me that folks in their fandoms/fan spaces are like “oh, you’re into this thing? You should read what Stitch has said about it” in a positive way.

Like… it’s all very validating considering that outside of this space, folks… don’t like me very much because I talk about fandom and race.Read More »

Stitch @ BookNet Fest 2018

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Note: I used my headset to dictate a lot of this so most of the errors here exist because my computer still doesn’t understand me when I talk…

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I finally got the chance to sit down and work on my write-up of my first time attending BookNet Fest, a relatively local convention for the book community that was in Orlando, Florida for two days this past weekend.

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Shannile + I on our way up north after a ton of ridiculous complications (possibly caused by a curse).

Thanks to the unbelievable kindness of people that I know on Twitter and who shared my crowdfunding a link on Facebook and their Twitter audiences as well, I was able to attend this convention where I actually had the opportunity to speak on two panels and attend Many More.

I attended the two-day convention with my childhood bestie Shannile and we had a BLAST just taking in all the amazing panels and meeting new people.

While I expected to have a great time meeting new people and talking about books with people who also likes to talk about books, I was incredibly pleased with the friendliness of everyone that I spoke to and with the knowledge I had gained from the various panels that I attended.

So let’s get started on my write-up which will include links to the social media profiles of some of the booktubers and bloggers and authors that I was able to meet and hang out with this weekend.

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Stitch Went to the U.S. Virgin Islands

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As y’all may have noticed by the very lengthy threads about fandom racism I keep making on my twitter, I’m back in Florida.

I had a lovely time visiting my father and once hurricane season is over, I’m going to go back and visit him (or get him to come up here once airports are open and whatnot). I loved being in my childhood bedroom and getting to bask in a sense of community that I still don’t really have in Florida. Those of you who grew up in/have lived in small towns know how it is: everyone knows your business and your face.

It can be stifling if you’re there all the time, but when you come home to visit? It’s just delightful to realize how many people know you, love you, and miss you. I’m a pretty likeable person and I’m So Good at making friends, but there’s something about coming home and having your people literally embrace you with giddy joy when they see you walking down the street that’s just… something else.

As much fun as I had with my darling dad and being reminded that I’m just beloved by so many people, there was a serious purpose to me going back home too: I wanted to see what the island looked like eight months after Irma and Maria.Read More »

A Quick Update

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If you know me from tumblr (the same username as my website), that’s on an indefinite hiatus for the foreseeable future.

For various reasons (including someone (some people?) running a smear campaign against me and reblogging my stuff with vicious untruths for at least two straight days), I’ve decided that I currently don’t want to spend time on the platform and that my time needs to be spent working rather than reblogging.

The harassment is a portion of it, but not the entirety. It was just the final straw.

From here on on, I’m only going to be active on Twitter when it comes to social media. I’ll continue to write content on fandom and media racism, of course, but tumblr is no longer in the equation on any level. You can also always reach me on here or via my contact form page on my website.

On top of that, I’m going to be inaccessible for much of the next week. Tomorrow afternoon I’m flying down to help my elderly father with some things and seeing as he’s almost eighty, he doesn’t have internet. Unless I can get to someplace with internet (possibly the Kmart at the mall of it’s still up), I won’t be online.

Barring any awfulness, I’ll be back in Florida by the following Thursday with a notebook full of ideas and a much calmer sense of being.

This trip to see my dad was last minute and his idea since he needs help and wants me to hang out with him and my brother (who’s also visiting), but after the past few days I am glad for the break and the chance to have the cord cut between me and the internet so I can destress.

I’ll have my laptop and notebooks with me as well as my headset so I’m going to carve out some time to write as often as I can so I can come back to y’all with new content (not all of it Patreon-first)!

Thank you all for your patience and understanding!

Library Haul 1/22

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Library Haul 1-22 (1)

I had to pick up some books for my thesis and I wound up digging deep into my library’s film and literary criticism section despite the fact that I only needed ONE book from that section.

Here are the books I took out today, maybe you’ll find something you like!

  1. J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge, and Beyond by David Kalat
  2. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film by Harry M. Benshoff
  3. Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan edited by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker
  4. Supervillains and Philosophy edited by Ben Dyer
  5. Good Girls & Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation by Amy M. Davis
  6. Vader, Voldemort, and Other Villains: Essays on Evil in Popular Media edited by Jamey Heit
  7. The Thrill of Repulsion: Excursions into Horror Culture by William Burns
  8. Batman Death of the Family by Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder
  9. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley
  10. Batman: Harley Quinn by Paul Dini, Yvel Guichet, Aaron Sowd, Don Kramer, Wayne Faucher, Joe Quinones, and Neil Googe
  11. Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
  12. Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 02 by John Wagner, Pat Mills, and Brian Bolland
  13. The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

2017 Wrap-up

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2017 wrap-up (2)

I usually wait until the end of the year to do this and spend the thirty-first panicking my way through remembering everything I did/read/saw/ate this year, but I’m going to pretend that I’ve turned a new leaf over here and well… put this up this from now.

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I do not “agree to disagree”

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There’s a guy in my Monday night class.

He was in my Monday night class last semester.

And his big thing, his huge thing, is looking at the other side and agreeing to disagree when people get angry with what he’s saying or point out that he’s just… being a dick in the interest of exploring whatever it is that he thinks he’s exploring. He did it all of last semester in our class on “the everyday”, in the hallway when my friends and I were talking about literally anything, and on facebook when someone has an opinion and he feels like playing the Devil’s advocate pro bono.

And he did it yesterday during our first class of the semester when we were talking about the status of Confederate statues/monuments around the US and I swear, I nearly stroked out from anger.Read More »

Totally Anecdotal: Stitch’s Brush With Racism in Education

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I wanted to start my review of Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales: A Spider-Man Novel with a slightly relevant anecdote on an experience I had as a teenager.

As an adult that was once a Black kid in the US education system (in Florida, natch), one racist teacher can make your school life a living hell even if they’re not part of a creepy (but absolutely plausible) plot to disenfranchise and subjugate Black people. So I wanted to talk about that.

But this got long and no one wants to read this sort of thing literally on top of a review so…

Separate post!

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Ten years ago I was a senior in a mediocre charter high school. I was sixteen and had just skipped a grade (taking 11th/12th grade English at the same time) so that I could graduate early. Up until this point, all of my teachers were aware that I had “Bored Genius Syndrome” and that if they didn’t keep me engaged in the school work, something else would.

So they kept me busy.Read More »

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 »

2017 Resolutions (A Day Late)

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  • To be better at deadlines for work and school and to get comfortable communicating when a deadline isn’t going to work before it hits.
  • To go after the things I want (jobs, writing opportunities, friendships) without talking myself out of it.
  • To finish at least one short story a month and either post them or submit them to websites/magazines/anthology calls.
  • To be more confident in my writing as I go about improving. I don’t have to change my style to fit anyone but myself. Getting better at writing is different from changing how I write so I need to focus that.
  • To read more and to review more. I have this thing about making my reviews perfect but that means I don’t get as many out as I want or should. So 2017 will be the year I review more of the things I read right after I’m finished reading them
  • To remember to disengage from situations or behaviors that aren’t helpful or healthy. I love critiquing fandom and media as much as the next nub, but I need to remember to step back. Hurting people (myself included) is never going to be something I want to do here so I need to keep that in mind.
  • To lose a little weight. I feel fine and healthy, but it’s still something I want to do.
  • To be better with Patreon or shut that shit down. This goes hand in hand with me sticking with deadlines, obviously.
  • To bake macarons!
  • To learn how to drive!
  • To get an actual adult job and an apartment of my own.
  • To be a better, more engaged friend. It’s hard for me because I prefer to be alone most of the time, but that’s not fair to my friends.
  • To spend less time on things I hate and people I don’t like.
  • To read 60 books! And review them (at the very least, on goodreads).

Aaaah?

Hopefully this goes well!

The Author In Their Times (Unless That Author Wrote A Comic Book)

Stitch

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One of the three graduate courses I’m taking is a class called “The Author in their Time/s”. It’s a class that looks at authors writing fiction about a period in history as they lived in said period. This specific class, taught by a professor that reminds me a bit of Heathcliffe (the cat, not the Wuthering Heights dude), is about the Cold War.

A huge issue that I’ve been having with academia – even before the Literature degree in-progress – is that a lot of the people who teach my classes or who are in said classes have no idea that comic books could even remotely fall underneath the banner of respectable literature. We learn about the same white guys and gals and the same types of Literature on end until it’s all but beaten into us that academia only cares about certain types of narratives.Read More »