Flame Con could be your best day-date in Spring 2015. It will be a one-day convention and expo celebrating all things geeky and queer from comics, video games, film, and television, but the organizers need help funding the con! If you are already sold, head to their Kickstarter and help get them to their $15,000 goal before December 4. If you need to know more, let me present…
Five reasons to support Flame Con:
1. The creators, non-profit Geeks OUT!, have been active in the queer geek community since 2010. They’ve organized queer-positive spaces at larger comic con events, hosted discussion panels, held movie screenings, and invited geeky queers to social events like a Jedi self-defense class and fan art shows dedicated to George Takei, Sigourney Weaver, and Ian McKellen. Now, imagine this kind of fun being a whole con unto itself.
2. The panels they have proposed include discussions of queer representation, homophobia and transphobia, body image, creative processes, and more pending your suggestions.
3. From the organizers: “The LGBTQ community is separated into different groups that don’t often mix or learn from each other’s experiences: gays and lesbians, cisgender and trans people, twinks and bears… But comic cons are all about mixing! People of every size, gender identity and expression, age, color and type come to comic conventions to get geeky, expressing what makes each of us different, special, and awesome. Cons are about meeting people face-to-face. You realize you’re not alone in what you love. A queer comic con is a great way to bring us all together under one roof.”
4. Flame Con will gather lots of vendors, artists, and creators that cater to all kinds of interests and tastes. They want some big names, but are more interested in showcasing the queer positive indie art that often gets lost in major cons.
Noelle Stevenson (Lumberjanes, Nimona) and Allison Kolarik (Comic Book Afterlife) at the Geeks OUT! 2014 NYCC signing table.
5. At the end of the day, there will be a cosplay parade to a nearby after-party, because in the end, Flame Con is about community building and hanging with friends new and old, queer and geeky.
I know it is a streeeeetch from your keyboard to your credit card, but come on and show off your secret super-elasticity — Flame Con is worth it!
Here is the Kickstarter link, again.
Images via Flame Con
