Tag: #flashbackfriday

Flashback Friday: My Martha Jones (Fandom) Problem

Stitch

Note: I originally wrote this back in 2012 in response to a frustrating comment on a tumblr post about Martha Jones. Sadly, after all this time… fandom is not better about Martha Jones or any other Black woman it comes across.

There’s this post with a comic scan from the Doctor Who books going around where Martha Jones snarkily calls 10 out for his treatment of her in comparison of Rose. You can see the post at the link and read the comic for yourself, but basically she looks at him and is like, “Did Rose get this sort of treatment or was it just me?” 

This sort of treatment refers to one awful moment after another. I don’t know if you remember Martha’s run as a companion (and if you don’t, please attempt on fixing that), but she basically got no down time. Where all of the other companions got chances to have fun and visit places where people weren’t trying to kill them either in-show or off-screen, Martha didn’t get any of that. And to top it off, she’s directly referencing the fact that pretty much the only thing 10 talked about were the good times with Rose. Which according to the way he’s telling it, it all of the time.

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Flashback Friday : WOC as Props in Pop Music

Stitch

Originally written in hm… 2013, I think in response to Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, and Lily Allen using WOC as props in their videos.

 

Nicki-minaj-beez-in-the-trap

There’s such a huge difference between how WOC and white women treat WOC (specifically Black women because they make the most appearances in hip hop videos and videos poking fun at hip hop videos).

Look at Nicki Minaj. In Beez in the Trap, she was on the floor with the girls. There wasn’t a disconnect between what she was doing and what they were doing.

Missy Elliot may not have dropped down to the floor in her videos, but you always got the feeling that she was proud of her fellow WOC for being badass and beautiful and that’s why they got such a high position of power in her videos.

I honestly can’t remember M.I.A.  ever doing a solo video where WOC weren’t the front and focus of the music video.

Meanwhile, white celebrities thrive over using Black bodies as hypersexualized props in their music videos.Read More »

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

Stitch

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.