Flame Con 2025, an annual LGBTQ convention dedicated to rallying, empowering, and promoting the queer geek community, expanded this year to create more space in light of the political crisis, particularly for trans folk and youth.
Held Aug. 16 and 17 at the Sheraton Times Square, Flame Con offered a free library of LGBTQ literature, an all-ages campfire counterpart to the 21+ Fireball afterparty, and so much more. Lynaé DePriest, who has been co-hosting the mainstage program since 2017, has seen how the event has continuously centered inclusion, from mask mandates to tickets that are less than half of other comic conventions.
“This was the first space where I felt like I could be out as a trans non-binary person and be affirmed,” they said. “There’s so much representation within Flame Con of what the world can be, and what we can do by simply pulling up for each other.”
Under this year’s theme of “Resist,” several panels, like The Transgender Archive: Preserving Queer Lit & History Under Facism, were so packed that you couldn’t even get in. Project Fulcrum, created by collective liberation group Get Free and whose name draws inspiration from the smash hit Star Wars spin-off “Andor,” analyzed science fiction’s direct engagement with fascism, such as in the panel Rebellions Art Built On Hope.
“’Star Wars’ was our first introduction to the idea of resistance to fascism in fiction, even if we didn’t realize it when watching as children,” said panelist Anthony Torres. “The MAGA regime is whitewashing the history of Black and brown, trans, and queer Americans. Most of us want a country that recognizes the truth of who we are, that rights longstanding wrongs, and that embraces a future of real freedom and equality for all of us, no matter who we are, what we look like, or where we come from.”
Resistance through queer joy was felt across the event on both days among vendors, attendees and cosplayers. Cosplay, or dressing up like a person’s favorite characters from a story, has proven for many to be an artistic expression of individual empowerment. Robbie Ahmed cosplayed Marvel’s formidable huntsman Kraven and Namor, King of the underwater kingdom Talokan in “Black Panther.” Both looks openly showed his trans experience by revealing his chest, a choice not lost on Ahmed during these times of extreme transphobia.
“All art that we do humanizes us,” he said. “Cosplay might seem frivolous, but to me it’s the best way to engage and actually change people’s minds.”
Education was also a goal for community resource vendors like Pop Culture Hero Coalition. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization created and distributed over 10,000 free copies of “Lights, Camera…Identity: Never Alone,” an interactive comic book created for young LGBTQ people and anyone struggling with identity or discrimination issues and featuring “RuPaul’s Drag Race” icons.
“It teaches them just all of the basics of being proud of who they are,” said founder Chase Masterson, known for her role as Leeta in the science fiction TV series “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”
Masterson said the coalition aims to distribute more comics to help LGBTQ youth navigate the vitriol and impact of the Trump administration.
“The world needs you to be who you are,” she said when thinking about the rapidly rising suicide rates among queer and trans youth. “Just by being who you are, you are going to be saving lives. So be you and be proud about it because there is no replacement for you.”
Mutual aid was also a theme. Groups like To Proudly Go, a weekly drag show Saturday nights at Industry Bar, were also in full effect with a merch table. Austin Smith, the chief communications officer, noted how drag shows raise funds for LGBTQ rights organizations.
“We create safe spaces for people who can enjoy this different facet of queerness,” he said. “But then we also use those spaces as an opportunity to raise money for other groups. And it is unapologetically queer and nerdy.”
As with our community, queer art got political. Dallas Goodbar, a gay male erotic artist and floor vendor, began creating protest art after hearing homophobic slurs in the workplace. He called for the community to band together in these dark times. “Stop being victims. Fight back,” he said. “You have the tools. There are more of us than there are of them.”
Others revived the comic book industry’s long legacy of protest. Peruvian gay comic artist and founder of Uranus Comics Carlo Quispe updated Jack Kirby’s “Captain America” punching of a Nazi into a Spanish-speaking Kryptonian from the “Superman” universe punching then-2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump in his comic “Supermanuel.” Quispe made several connections between Trump and Superman’s most iconic nemesis, the ultra wealthy Lex Luthor. “Trump comes from real estate and has a history of evicting people of color, which is exactly what Lex Luthor used to do,” he said. “Lex Luthor is also a developer, an industrialist.”
Saturday’s mainstage concluded with a panel on the horror comedy “Queens Of The Dead,” which follows a zombie outbreak in a Brooklyn warehouse party among drag queens, club kids, and frenemies. Director and co-writer Tina Romero joined co-stars Julie J, Samora la Perdida, and “Pose” star Dominique Jackson, who inspired a 20,000 signature petition to Marvel to cast her as the weather-controlling mutant Storm in “X-Men.” The four connected the story to the ongoing political crisis and our own community’s difficulties with infighting.
“When will the queer community stop devouring its own?” Romero recalled in a line that surfaced on social media after internal conflict within the queer nightlife scene that would later inspire the film’s creation. Several snaps of resonance came from the audience. Self-love also came up.
“The more you become yourself and you find your community, the harder it is for people to disappear,” said la Perdida. All four rallied around hope, compassion and community.
“I want you to walk away from this movie and say I may not understand that person, but that person is a part of me too,” said Jackson. “We’re in an environment right now where I know so many of us are feeling fear.
Jackson added: “It’s about how we rely on one another.”
“Queens of The Dead” hits theaters Oct 24.
Note from the writer: There’s something spectacular us queer and trans nerds. My first Flame Con was 2019, and it’s a space that permits joy of imagination by embodying your own superhero or magician — especially if you make it gay. I have never been prouder to count myself as a trans non-binary Black Asian nerd in a timeline when the bad guys are enacting the policies (literally making AI renderings of themselves as “Star Wars” villains.) Flame Con 2025 reminded me that we are the heroes and we will overcome any racist, sexist, xenophobic, ableist, queerphobic, transphobic government. Like all the cosplayers, artists and activists I met, we just have to imagine a better world until it becomes real.
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