Before Trickssi started attendingcosplay conventionsin 2008, she got a little advice from a friend: watch out.
And because of said outfit, a friend told her to “prepare” to be harassed.
And harassed she was.
Allure/Channing Smith
“When I got into the convention world, that was the expectation,” Trickssi tellsAllure.
“It’s not like, ‘youcouldget harassed in that.’
It’s, ‘be aware that you are going to be harassed.’
Deshawn Thomas
It felt like an older sister warning you.”
These experiences bred a rallying cry: cosplay is not consent.
But is that enough?
Trickssi (left) dressed as Boss and Feytaline as A-Set. Both characters are from the video gameAI: The Somnium Files
It began innocently enough.
That was all fine, until one man took his turn.
The images Thomas took with the fan looked good enough that she wanted them, too.
She gave him her number, and asked him to text her pics.
Again, all normal until the man continued texting Thomas and asked her to come to his house.
When she blocked his number, he just found her again at the conference.
It was time, in Thomas' words, to tell the man to “fuck off.”
(Thomas says the man was kicked out after shereportedwhat happened.)
“You tend to get a false sense of, oh no, this is great.
Everything’s fine, and then something will happen to you.”
Trickssi (left) dressed as Boss and Feytaline as A-Set.
(Again, we’re talkingreportedabuse sexual assault is theleast disclosedcrime.)
When conventions went online due to COVID, the nature of consent changed.
“We saw a lot of that.”
Trickssi says that she experienced no harassment during her initial return to real-life conventions.
That was December 2021, and by spring of this year, things had returned to a depressing normalcy.
Then they said, ‘Oh, yeah.
You look like one ofthose.'"
“I was so shocked,” she explains.
This particular con, which Trickssi did not name, had a policy against sexual harassment.
“That ultimately led our team to enact the language and policy” that exists today.
That seemed like normal behavior.
The man began hugging her, but didnt stop, “for five whole minutes.”
Then he took out a disposable camera and began taking photos of the embrace.
She says multiple friends witnessed the event, but no one stepped in to stop it.
(To curb such incidents, NYCC’s policy reads, “Keep your hands to yourself.
But it hasn’t curtailed the problem all together.
It’s this damsel in distress many cosplayers picture when they think of consent.
“People have taken the word consent to mean sexual things that happen,” Trickssi says.
It’s racial harassment, or plus-size cosplayers being called names.
A good score isn’t indicative of a utopia.
Organizes want to check that their rules are easy to understand, accessible to all visitors, and enforceable.
San Diego’s Comic-Con, meanwhile, is just one vague paragraph.
Harassing or offensive behavior will not be tolerated,” it reads in part.
“Common sense for who?”
A zero-tolerance policy is great, Miles says, but only goes so far.
Ultimately, Trickssi hopes survivors realize that they are not alone.
There are things going on for survivors who are cosplayers that non-cosplaying survivors dont understand.
You have to find other people [who understand what its like] to get through that.
“The problem I’ve always has it it just ends there,” she says.
“Cosplay is not consent to what?
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