The Strange Case of Stichomancery

How a Black Anti-Racist Started Carrying Water for Fascism

Ok buckle your seatbelts, this one’s wild.

If you’ve been in fandom spaces long enough, you’ve heard of Stichomancery or at the very least her blog, “Stitch’s Media Mix.” Maybe you haven’t seen her around but have heard whispers about her, telling you that she’s got great ideas or warning you to keep a wide berth so you don’t catch her eye. She’s been around fandom a fairly long time, her work focused primarily on the activities in and around fandom spaces and usually regarding the often awkward, difficult conversations to be had around race relations therein. This is an unenviable role, but one she has taken up with vigor and an iron fist as a fierce and influential voice for neglected Black communities struggling with the overwhelming whiteness of most fanworks and fan spaces.

The conversation about how white supremacy functions in fandom is much the same as the conversations we have about how it works in any other kind of space—fandom is a structure built within a society that formulates its social paradigms around white supremacy. Now there are going to be some folks who disagree with that statement inherently but most of us know it to be true on several levels and Stichomancery’s original work in her blog was about trying to snag up evidence of this that would highlight the need for diverse casting, writers, directors, and beyond that: transformative works. The actions of fans within fandoms were often part of this scrutiny and rightly so as exemplified by the treatment of John Boyega from select sections of fandom which was, in a word: gross.

So how did this seemingly well-intentioned blog turn into a hellscape of white-knighting for fascist policy? As far as we can tell, it happened in stages. Even in the beginning there were a few small snippets here and there to the trained eye that would suggest that Stitch wasn’t exactly a purveyor of progressivism in fandom spaces. Here and there it seemed as though Stitch was harboring some ill-will toward those who wrote fiction that she deemed problematic. While it seems very tempting to say “Well obviously those works are degenerate or racist,” it’s not exactly all that easy to define those words. More on that later. Things didn’t really start ramping up in terms of vitriol for Stitch’s Media Mix until Kylo Ren became a hit character among the Star Wars fandom. It almost appeared, through a few strange blog posts, that Kylo Ren had personally come out of the screen to burn Stitch’s crops and murder her family.

While the fandom was still writing pairings involving John Boyega’s character, Finn, and Oscar Isaac’s Poe, FinnPoe and FinnRey, the two most often written pairings, seemed to take a backseat to the “canon ball” (please laugh) of Reylo. It became increasingly clear through the progression of the last trio of films that Reylo was going to be endgame, leading a lot of shippers who’d hoped for a more dynamic and colorful ending to be salty about their favorite pair getting shafted by the writer’s room especially when Kylo Ren was…well…a Space Nazi. There’s plenty to be argued here over whether Kylo’s arc was meant to be redemptive or how one should read into the storyline, but that’s splitting hairs. What seemed more egregious to Stitch than anything else happening in fandom was that fandom was fully embracing Reylo fanfiction and FinnPoe, FinnRey, and other such pairings were being left in the dust.

This, she decided, must have been the product of white supremacy. Through a series of vicious postings calling Reylo shippers “Nazi-loving” and “tradwife wannabes,” she attributes the popularity of Reylo to the overwhelming masses of white people influencing the core values of fandom (that is, building those core values upon white-centric racism). Is this true? Well, it’s hard to say. Reylos may have been vocal and may have been bad-mannered at times, but is it fair to say that the Star Wars fandom can truly represent fandom culture as a whole? Not only that, but Reylos also took the brunt of some serious hate, as was evidenced by an article highlighting the types of heinous harassment experienced throughout that episode. Ship wars are always messy and since there were more Reylo shippers, there naturally would be more crazy Reylo shippers. That’s just how statistics work.

Now don’t get me wrong, nobody here is claiming that fandom doesn’t have a racism problem. But fandom has a racism problem the same way that the world at large has a racism problem—it’s a microcosm of a larger world in which it is built and so it mimics those paradigms that exist around it. If media writers, directors, and casting directors are coming up with stories that are less diverse and endgame couples that are less diverse, fanworks are going to mimic that. Whatever storylines are more fraught with tension, intrigue, and elements that beg for “what if’s” are going to be more popular among fan writers. A lot of fan writers are white because they are being marketed toward by media creators due to elements of our larger society influenced by racism (if the data mined from streaming companies and internet usage displays a higher usage among white women, for instance, a company may choose to focus on that demographic to boost sales rather than try something new to attract other demographics). None of this is any individual person’s fault but merely another tendril of our systemic failures that lend themselves toward a higher number of white-centric fanworks. There is a lot more that could be said here, but those conversations can be had at a future date, Stitch’s rage is about more than just this.

Not only has Stitch developed an entire platform based around the aforementioned issues, she’s also designed her online presence to operate almost entirely on the defensive. Even when Stitch is running offense, she’s running defense. How Stitch does this is by making outrageous statements that are, if not wrong, entirely inappropriate and then snapping back that all of the criticism against her is harassment and that the root of it is racist. One might think that this tactic could find itself in a bind when it’s so hopeless tied up in the mire of identity politics but Stitch finds a way around that easily with the logic that all Black people, and especially Black women, who oppose her are either not Black at all or are “social justice Pokemon of Color” who are at the whim of white woman masters and merely yearn for their approval. Now, I’d like you to take a moment and re-read this paragraph. When you’ve finished peeling your eyebrows off the ceiling and picking your jaw up off the floor at the audacity, we can move forward. What this tactic fails to do is open the door for actual conversation. It’s Stitch’s way or the highway. There is no invitation here for any person to speak or ask questions or show concern. Stitch will, sometimes, make sure to draw every bit of attention to you so that her followers can see exactly who you are (though never actually what you did or said, since you may have been reasonable and she can’t have that) if not on Twitter, in a fully-formulated hit piece she will write in her blog about you specifically. Yes. That’s a thing.

Once Stitch’s followers know who you are, you’re in for the ride of your life. It doesn’t matter what you actually did. It matters how Stitch portrayed your crimes against her in her posts. Even just asking a simple question can get you labeled as “mask-off” in a blog post. But all this took a little time, these unhinged personal vendetta posts were not what Stitch was originally known for, her work in discussing racism in fiction used to be comprehensive, reasoned, and well-studied. But, as another Twitter user pointed out in a discussion about her: “The socmed popularity and pugilistic feedback loop is a hell of a drug.” It’s fair to say that there’s been a bit of backlash against Stitch for a few relatively normal things she’s said in the past, but more and more of what Stitch believes to be “harassment” is just old run-of-the-mill criticism. It seems like even just pointing out the very words she’s said in the past without comment is sometimes considered “harassment.”

Now, where does “carrying water for fascism” come in? All of this might be reason to avoid catching her eye but what in the world makes Stitch and others like her so dangerous to fandom communities? This all stems from the fact that fandom really is a type of microcosm of the world in which it resides. Throughout the last few years, there has been a significant rise in right-wing extremism. We’ve seen it in the United States most prominently (which is where Stitch is based) but it’s been seen in the United Kingdom, France, and other democratic countries as well. Part of right-wing talking points is the prominent insistence that fictional materials available to the public and especially to children are harmful to their growing minds and a worldview they wish to nurture, devoid of all degenerate themes. Most of us are going to be aware of the attacks on library funding, drag queen reading hours, and even defamation of librarians by calling them “pedophiles” and “groomers” due to (usually) LGBTQIA+ literature included on their shelves. If this sounds familiar to any fandom users and it’s making your palms itch, I’m sure I know why.

The Organization for Transformative Works or the “OTW” for short, is a fan-owned, fan-operated, and fan-run organization that has, as one of its many features, a type of library, or archive. “Archive of Our Own” or “Ao3” is a vast and ever-growing collection of fanworks collected and organized through the most comprehensive tagging system ever devised in an online archive.

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization established by fans to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate.

- transformativeworks.org

It is this online archive (library) that fields some of the most ruthless attacks from all corners of the internet. So far, the archive has managed not only to survive every attack coming toward it from a plethora of private interest groups, but thrive despite them. While Livejournal ended up a victim of the Warriors for Innocence and FanFiction.Net ended up a victim of monetary interests and ad revenue, the Archive is primarily funded by donation drives and run entirely by volunteers (so far). The types of attacks that come at the Archive are familiar ones—accusations that it harbors pedophiliac content, that it’s a haven for “freaks,” and that it has dangerous material that will warp children’s understanding of healthy relationships. These sound familiar don’t they?

But why would Stitch be railing against a library? Isn’t she progressive? Isn’t she interested in preserving fanworks that otherwise might be lost to the kinds of purges we experienced with Livejournal, Quizilla, Geocities, Tumblr, Yahoo! Groups, and FF.Net? If you ask Stitch herself, her answer might be “Yes, of course!” because one doesn’t get very popular in fandom spaces by advocating for the mass deletion of fanfiction, but the real answer is a little bit more complex. While Stitch has, here and there, stated that she is not advocating for “censorship” of works, her definition of censorship and the ACLU’s definition seem to be at odds with each other. Stitch has stated herself that the current only recourse to force the removal of what she determines to be “racist” fanworks is by harassing creators until they can’t handle the negative attention anymore and remove it themselves.

According to the ACLU’s definition of censorship, this most definitely counts, being organized and afflicted upon writers by a private pressure group (this is for those who think only the government can censor you).

“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. “Yeah, Stitch has the right idea, we should bully everyone until we can get all racist material removed from the archive.” Unfortunately, this is a reactionary, and reductionist manner of going about things—issues like this are rarely, if ever, that simple. One of the reasons why the United States, where the Archive is hosted, has such a hard time banning hate speech is that in order for a hate speech law to be written, it must fulfill two requirements: it must not be unduly vague nor overly broad. Shockingly, this is an incredibly tall ask. You might think to yourself, “I’d know it if I saw it,” but the unfortunate reality is: you absolutely would not. The logistics of putting together a law, much less a Terms of Service that could be enforceable by a team of volunteers who cannot possibly read every reported fictional work for what would have to be an incredibly specific set of parameters for acceptable content would most likely render the Archive utterly unusable, especially by the very people Stitch is looking to protect.

You're mistaken if you think its just the racist whites who will have their work flagged. Work by PoC just mentioning our lived experiences will be flagged as racist by well meaning folks for "stereotyping". Ive had work I've submitted for publishing rejected on this basis! - @blow_me_a_kis (Twitter)

Stitch has advocated for a vague “better tagging system” or a tagging system that might allow for someone else to label a work as racist—naturally something that would never be agreed to by writers who are in constant fear of being labeled a racist or a degenerate for having written something, leaving them wondering if they can ever put anything up on the site without someone labeling them even if the label does not apply. The latter point begs repeating: Are we truly so naive to think that a function like this would not be abused? Even without tags like this, writers have been smeared over perfectly normal fiction that so-called “academics” haven’t even bothered to read before they’ve labeled the writer a racist. How would we ever be sure that such a thing would not be used against any story with any minority in it at all? The simple answer is: we cannot ensure that such a tool or system would not be abused to harm the very people Stitch claims to wish to protect.

Recently, the Organization for Transformative Works held their periodic election cycle, replacing three board members with votes from those who donated to the OTW in the past year. One of the potential new board members was a woman by the name of Tiffany G whose responses to some of the public interview questions raised some eyebrows in the fandom community at large. No fandom community raised eyebrows harder than those on Weibo, the largest Chinese social media site today. China’s government infamously banned the Archive on their Internet in early 2020 and those in China who liked to link out to the Archive to avoid Chinese site moderation were suddenly unable to access it without a VPN. Fandom users on Weibo were incensed by Tiffany’s interview answers as it became apparent that her stance on the tagging system and content of the Archive were unacceptable based on the perception of the Archive from outside countries. Though Tiffany never specified what country she meant, it was fairly obvious to Weibo’s fandom users that she referenced China as they are the most prominent of any non-western country to take a stand against the Archive’s content policies and those Weibo users who already have to deal with Chinese censorship policies were loathe to think they might have to battle it in the very place they thought they were safe from it. Tiffany was determined to be Chinese and though there were some instances where this was a factor in reactions, most users who spoke up did so before that was common knowledge, merely reacting based on her interview answers and voicing concerns which Stitch later would attribute to…you got it: racism.

Fandom, constantly reeling from purge after purge after purge cannot react fast enough or hard enough against censorship. Though some elements of the fandom are adamant that Ao3 needs to purge unacceptable degenerate works from their site, those members of fandom are usually young and have been severely and unfortunately influenced by the rise of conservative talking points that have infiltrated far too many queer online spaces. So much so that they find themselves protesting a library despite all their morals seemingly pointing in the opposite direction. At the head of these kinds of loose-knit organizations of fans are people who convince them that activism is something they can do while sitting in front of their computers calling content creators pedophiles and racists because that’s what gets results. People who claim to be academics or scholars or activists, who weaponize identity politics in order to use everyone’s race as a cudgel to swing indiscriminately. This is what makes Stitch so dangerous to fandom communities, because it’s easy to hate pedophiles and racists and degenerates but it’s difficult to determine who they are. Why? Because you can’t trust Stitch to tell you who they are. You can’t trust anyone to tell you who they are. Because maybe they just asked a question. Maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe they made a mistake and they’re learning from it and moving forward. Maybe they just ship Reylo.

Stitch and those like her have made it possible for naive fandom goers to now consider the words “anti-censorship” to be a “dog whistle” for pedophiles and racists. This kind of mentality has been seeping into fandom spaces and LGBTQ spaces for some time now, becoming in some cases the dominant ideology with discord servers and facebook groups sporting a ToS or DNI with lists overly-long, and needlessly complicated that make it daunting to even just say hi. People on Twitter and other spaces feel entitled to every bit of your personal information from what race you are to your sexual assault history so they can judge your worthiness to speak or interact or create. They determine what is acceptable, what mold you must fit in, what places you may go, and they use patterns and rules that have filtered down from the natural leaders around them. “DNI if you are ‘anti-censorship’” is a not-uncommon line in many carrds among those influenced by this kind of ideology, their own words denoting that they’re more than willing to ascribe to the narrative that librarians are pedophiles and racists.

It’s easy to start thinking about all of this as completely separate from the conservative movements to ban books but in reality it’s very much not at all. The same kinds of books that the GOP wants banned from libraries would be represented in fanworks that pro-censorship fandom wants banned from the Archive. Why? Because they can’t actually recognize the things they want to ban. Take a cursory glance around Twitter and you’ll find at least three threads written by 15-19 year olds decrying Lolita as a fetish novel. Read the story of mine that “fandom academic” Rukmini Pande determined was “sympathetic” to Nazism and discover for yourself that it’s explicitly anti-Nazism. Look up the backlash against Isabel Fall which made her hide away forever from publishing due to the utter incompetence of so-called critics. Whether they are purposeful lies or just bad media literacy, the result is the same: banning books.

Stitch has been carrying water for book-banning conservatives in fandom for years, advocating for activism against an online library and encouraging pressure on creators whose works she personally dislikes. Sometimes it’s not even the work. Sometimes it’s just the person. In campaigns that some have likened to those of Winterfox, Stitch has been sowing the seeds of discord with the plausible deniability of “I cannot control my followers” every time someone is doxxed, sent death threats, or suicide bait based on her highlighting their alleged crimes against her or against fandom as a whole. Stitch’s rhetoric is purposefully inflammatory (calling people Nazis, Pick-Mes, and white supremacists is hardly “mild criticism”) and invites followers to lash out with impunity, after all, who could blame you for your righteous crusade against the evils of those Stitch told you had committed such heinous acts?

In the end, fandom still has an issue with race. There are an overwhelming number of top ships involving white characters, there is more media represented that appeals to white consumers, and multiple social factors within fandom discourage diversity in fanworks to the point where it has become something of a novelty for a creator to even consider the notion. Is the solution to those things a better tagging system? Obviously not. Our conversations about race in fandom are going to continue being fraught with nuance, complexity, and a frustrating amount of helplessness in confronting what amount to be systemic issues. What we don’t need to make any of that more difficult are fandom “academics” and “scholars” developing their careers by peddling disguised censorship as a viable solution in some Trojan Horse of faux-concern.