The following post contains discussion of alleged sexual assault, stalking, and predatory behavior. Most links are to conversations on Threads, some of which contain victim blaming and defense of assault.
Please exercise caution and look after yourself before clicking links.
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The con drama has been nonstop this year, as people try to launch weekend events and one, two, or nineteen things go wrong. The latest: Sinners & Stardust.
Sinners & Stardust is a weekend event that hosts an author signing and a Dark Romance Ball to celebrate the readers and authors of dark romance. At the ball, apparently many, many things went very, very wrong.
It was the top few trending topics on Threads, in fact.
Look at that! More posts on this topic than on Taylor Swift’s album and Jillian Michaels being a racist.
So, What Happened?
HD Carlton reported on Instagram that cosplayer Animus, who was in attendance, was allegedly groped to the point that their body paint was smeared with handprints. They were allegedly sexually assaulted, and had an Airtag placed somewhere near or on their person.
Animus has also posted their own statement about what happened, explaining that they are not pressing charges:
DanaLeeAnnAuthor posted, “I’d like to remind people that kissing an author is super uncomfortable.”
Other attendees have mentioned audiobook narrators and voiceover artists were also subjected to lewd and inappropriate comments.
One attendee, whose Threads name changed between Jilleeyreadss and jaayreadsss before they deleted their account, was allegedly a conference volunteer, and as part of their ball attire wore a strap on dildo and flashed people with it (NB: That link contains a picture of this person and their dildo). Reports from other attendees have included that they were asked “Do you want to see something,” or that this person was whipping it out on an elevator with no comment.
Jilleey/Jaay posted an apology on Threads before disappearing:
Stick a pin in the “teaching moment” idea because, boy, oh boy, you can bet we’re coming back to that.
What has the response been?
Mostly, horror and condemnation, which is reassuring. But also, as I noted in my initial warning, plenty of victim blaming.
There’s some “you normalized this in your dark romance books” rebuttal, which, please have many seats, and, no, you don’t get a snack while you wait.
We have been battling that same bullshit accusation under many different banners.
“Normalizing assault” is a cousin to “gives women unrealistic expectations.” No one, as Elliot Harlow says, runs up to George R.R. Martin and threatens him with a sword while folks shrug and go, “Well, he was asking for it.” We don’t say this crap much about men or about other genres.
But, whoo damn, do we say it about romance and romance readers. It happens to me, too, when I tell people that I write about romance fiction. I was asked about my sex life on live television. Outsiders are easily comfortable crossing boundaries of conversation to enquire about sex merely because I’ve mentioned romance novels.
And the crossing of boundaries continues. I do not want to accept the idea that some readers are too fucking stupid to reliably know the difference between reality and fiction, or are so deluded as to use their fiction to excuse their unacceptable behavior, but holy crap, look where we are.
“You normalized this” is a feeble attempt to deflect or defend terrible behavior choices, to blame the victims and to silence them because they ‘asked for it’ by writing dark romances or doing the performance they were paid to do.
As author Marie McKay said, “you’re not supposed to act like the MMCs in a dark romance. That’s why it’s in the dark romance section.”
Also, one more side note: dark romance isn’t the problem. Dark romance and its contents are in part a reflection of current reality, about how women feel right now: powerless, stalked, victimized, and subject to horrifying conduct.
Furthermore this behavior is already normalized, judging by the number of people who are sexually assaulted. (Per RAINN, that’s one person every 68 seconds according to current data.)
If someone wishes to read about those experiences within a fictional world in a genre where the ending is promised to be happy, please, for the love of all that is holy, leave them alone.
Sinners & Stardust released a statement on Instagram, and while I haven’t seen it on their website, I hope it is shared there, too.
It outlined some changes for the 2026 gathering, including:
Safety for our guests: Authors, narrators, vendors, their assistants, our influencers, and special guests will now have a secure, dedicated area during the ball, with their own security. They may move freely between areas, but attendees are not permitted in their area under any circumstances. If an attendee is caught trying to go into their secured space they will be immediately removed and banned from future events.
Smaller, safer events. We are decreasing the number of tickets available to ensure a more comfortable, safe, and respectful experience for everyone.
These rules are not suggestions. They are expectations. Violations, including harassment, non consensual touching, photos taken without permission, invasive questions, or any behavior that makes others feel unsafe WILL result in immediate removal and a permanent ban from ALL future Sinners & Stardust hosted events.
(NB: I’ve been to events that have private breakfast and meeting spaces for the speakers, and, wow, is it lovely.)
Sinners & Stardust’s statement is a good first step, but I think there clearly needs to be a lot more communication and oversight.
More specifically, attendees at events that feature sexually explicit events and potential performances will need explicit, specific instructions as to what boundaries are and how they will be enforced.
The kink community already knows how to host events like these, and I’m reminded of past events and discussions when romance was heavy into BDSM portrayals, but light on the full nuanced education thereof.
As the_prologue99 pointed out:
Unfortunately what happened at sinners and stardust, is the consequences of people entering kink spaces without being properly educated. These “dark” romances feature themes that seem non-consensual but in the real world scenes played out would require enthusiastic consent from all parties as well as check ins before and after a scene took place. This isn’t a playground made for people to commit actual sexual crimes. This was a FANTASY ball, not a dungeon/club….
And if you acted like that in a dungeon/club they would kick you out and ban you. My heart is with all the victims, I’m sorry for what happened you at the hands of others who you believed you were safe with.
The_prolouge99 is right: these are people engaging in explicit spaces without being properly educated on how to do so.
Regardless, this shouldn’t keep happening. It’s happened before. It’ll probably happen again. It’s fucking abhorrent and it needs to stop.
In the late 2000s/early 2010s, anime conventions had to explain clearly and explicitly that “Cosplay isn’t Consent.” Someone dressed as a sexually provocative character isn’t giving unspoken permission to be groped or assaulted. And that reminder still happens because assault still happens.
We’ve had obsessive-level parasocial relationships in romance before, too – Twilight fans were downright creepy to the actors in the movies, and to the author. I know you can think of other examples.
HD Carlton also echoed a statement made by Katee Robert, that they’ve scaled back their husband’s involvement in their social media and appearances due to extremely invasive and inappropriate conduct from readers. I also remember the number of people taking sneak pictures of Sarah J. Maas’s husband calling him a “real life Rhysand.”
And there’s the whole debacle last year with hockey romance, and readers sexually harassing players. Kayleigh Donaldson and I discussed this at length one year ago today in a podcast episode that covered the TikTok hockey romance trend, and the larger issue of parasocial relationships leading to deeply disturbing behavior. As Kayleigh said,
“I think you certainly notice the way that a lot of women thought that acting like a man was somehow like an empowering move on this front. I think that’s definitely like a very lazy, pseudo-feminist idea….”
Yup.
But the first thing I thought of when reading reports from Sinners & Stardust: the cover models at RT.
The Romantic Times BookLovers Convention used to have the Mr. Romance Pageant, which many of us called the “mangeant.” (I found pictures of the 2008 Mr. Romance Pageant, if you’d like a peek.) The cover models and the Mr. Romance pageant contestants endured a lot of the same treatment, and it was not as vocally condemned as it has been today.
Mr. Romance pageant contestants used to have to basically schmooze the attendees for their votes. Early descriptions of the event in the magazine call them “romance heroes come to life,” and they’d be expected to behave courteously and with great solicitation to the attendees. You can imagine how well that went. There are some very fortunate people who didn’t have their assaulting behavior filmed and shared on social media, because, wow, did it happen.
This environment was further complicated by publishers like Ellora’s Cave bringing their own “Ellora’s Cavemen” to RT (and BEA one time, omg) and the directives for their attendee interaction were very different. And because Ellora’s Cave published explicit material and was one of the earlier small presses to specialize in it, the presence of the Cavemen and their performances led to a mixed, often unfortunate, result in attendee behavior.
Again, we’ve been here before. It would be fucking fantastic if we could make different choices.
Why do we have to discuss boundaries over and over again? Because this is a problem with cis women, specifically cis women who, as Kayleigh said, think that adopting toxic “masculine” behaviors and inflicting them on others is somehow empowerment. It’s not.
Several people have expressed similar sentiments, including Georgina Kiersten (emphasis mine):
I just got caught up in the Sinners and Stardust convention, and I am horrified, but not surprised. I am a stealth trans man, and I have seen 1st hand in both Romancelandia and the fandom how cis women objectify men and think it’s okay.
There is big portion of women in the world who think liberation is having the privilege to get away with committing the same wrongs as men do without impunity. This is what it all boils down to.
Charlotte Stein pointed out that the larger issue isn’t just about fiction and reality, or parasocial relationships, or the material inside a book:
I’ve said this many times before and people refuse to accept it or they just strawman it. It’s not the books or the enjoyment of the books. It’s the trends.
It’s suppression of critical thinking about them, the vilification of anyone who does, and the culture that fosters.
It’s making the books your whole identity. It’s refusing to understand or accept how fiction and reality interact….
The reason this has happened in the past is not because the present is innocent and fine. It’s because the behaviour never really gets addressed. The culture around it never gets addressed. It gets shut down with “one bad apple” or “well it’s just the way things are”.
This particular line really grabbed me: “It’s suppression of critical thinking…the vilification of anyone who does, and the culture that fosters.”
On a larger scale, we’re surrounded by people admired, praised and enabled for being the absolute worst versions of humanity. We’re surrounded by people who are eager to mimic that behavior because that’s, according to them, what power and leadership look like.
And we’re part of a culture within romance that places authors and performers in a situation where to reject a “fan” could likely cause intense scrutiny and incur a high social cost should video or photos reach social media. People conducting business are forced to override their own discomfort for fear of being reported publicly as rude. Because you know right now that rumor would be all the way to Mars before the truth could unlock its phone.
Events like Sinners & Stardust are, despite the costumes and the revelry, the performances and the glitter, WORK EVENTS. This is a professional event for these people.
So, to recap:
Reading choices are not a cause nor a defense for assault.
This is not a “teaching moment.” We already know this is unacceptable. And yet it still happens.
This should be a revolutionary moment: we as a community need to be calling out other women the way we ask men to hold other men accountable. This is our community acting this way. And we need to hold our community accountable.
We now have to ensure that it is an unacceptable choice to engage in assault and objectification. That means more education, clear explicit rules of conduct, and consequences for violations thereof. It means more security – which will mean higher prices for cons that are often already expensive. It means being uncomfortable while telling someone that what they’re doing is not okay.
When I first went to Romantic Times in 2008, I definitely saw some of the same behavior. And I thought, “Well, I guess that’s how things are.” The difference was, it was 18 years ago, and I was the new person. I was the new blogger whose acceptance wasn’t guaranteed in the community (blogs were an outrage, if you can believe it, and I know that you can) and I was also 18 years younger.
I am now about the same age as the people I saw behaving this way. And I am here now as an elder member of the community to tell the younger, newer readers: This is not acceptable. I will speak up, and I will tell you you are out of line.
This has happened before. This is going to keep happening unless we as a community stop and address those who do it while it happens and afterward and before the next time occurs.
One more thing: a number of the people at the Sinners & Stardust Ball were aspiring and current book influencers of various platforms. And funny enough, my Chani horoscope today had something to say about influencers that I think folks should read:
Every now and again, my horoscope is rather precise, but this is next level ridiculous. But it is 100% true:
True influence isn’t about recognition. It’s about integrity and the people who feel safer because of you.
Be the safe person.