What a weekend! I had been feeling quite an emotional build-up over the past few months in anticipation of Flamecon 2.0. It came and went in a blink as did the Rio Olympics, which I had also heavily anticipated and watched with lots of emotions. Between the two happenings, I was drained, which is why this post-event note is coming out on a bit of a time delay.

Geeks OUT did a tremendous job with the con. Super well-organized, full of great programming, and staffed by amazingly friendly and helpful volunteers. Flamecon 2.0 was a big expansion on the inaugural event last year, and the organizers met that challenge, garnering crowds for two days and impressive media coverage. They already announced that because of the success, they will be putting on the con next year.

My one regret is that I didn’t take more photos. I had been hoping to tweet and Facebook throughout the weekend, but I got snagged by unreliable Wifi and cellular connectivity. I’m sharing the few photos I took along with some of the highlights for me.

Without a doubt, the best part of the con was meeting up with my fellow Genre Junkies to work our table. I was glad to be back with David Swatling, who I had joined up with last year. Christian Baines and Joel Weinberg were pretty new to me, and luckily they both turned out to be terrific guys. Joel even gave me a signed copy of his book True Religion, which I look forward to reading.

Here we are, the Genre Junkies, l to r: me, David Swatling, Christian Baines and J.L. Weinberg.

Of course, there were a ton of exhibits to check out, and I picked up an “Expecto Patrnonum” t-shirt, which was exactly what I’ve always wanted even though I didn’t know until the moment I saw it. That’s kind of what Flamecon is like in a nutshell. You realize just how right everything in the world can be. A dude walking around in a t-shirt emblazoned with a lizard waving a rainbow flag. A girl in pigtails wearing an R2D2 mini-dress. Boys with purses shaped like hamburgers, and a trio of con-ers weaving through the crowd strumming ukuleles.  For me, It was the little things that made the biggest impressions.

I had the chance to attend the panel: “Breaking the rules of teen lit” with authors Laurent Linn (Draw the Line), Bil Wright (Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy), Allison Cherry (Look Both Ways), and Michael Barakiva (One Man Guy). They are each impressive writes who have made it into the mainstream via big house publishers. One thing that stood out from their talk was Cherry’s discussion of the challenge of writing bi teen characters, what she called a “lose, lose, lose, lose” situation. Closely paraphrased, she talked about how:

A. If you write a bi girl character who ends up with a boy, you’re criticized for portraying bisexuality as a passing phase.

B. If you write a bi girl character who ends up with a girl, you’re criticized for portraying bisexuality as merely a passage to lesbianism.

C. If you write a bi girl character who ends up with neither, you’re criticized for suggesting that bisexual characters don’t deserve a happy ending.

D. If you write a bi girl character who ends up in a polyamorous, or open, or multi-gender relationship, you’re criticized for propagating the stereotype that bisexual people are greedy and promiscuous.

Such is the position of those of us writing characters who stand in as representatives of everyqueer. Happily, more YA books about bisexual and other queer characters are getting published each year, so hopefully, readers of LGBT YA can appreciate that a single story is just one perspective on being B or L or G (even slower to gain a variety of perspectives: the Ts, Qs, TS’s, Is and As).

Though I wonder sometimes: we’re an awfully passionate community. I expect that debate about “good” and “bad” portrayals will persist beyond my lifetime; and that’s not a terrible thing. As the panelists’ stated, we’re all entitled to speak our truths.

Here are the few photos I took while I took a break from the Genre Junkies table and wasn’t too distracted taking everything in.

Here’s Flamey, the con mascot, who greeted us at the door.

The main exhibit hall

Con’ers lining up for Saturday’s contest.