There’s a cloud over Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC) this year and, no, it’s not pissing rain. It’s pissing ICE.
Back in January, con-goers discovered that ECCC’s parent company, ReedPop—which acquired the con in 2015 and runs a variety of cons including New York City Comic Con and BookCon—has a not-so-distant connection to the immigration enforcement agency.
The problem lies in a rotten, corporate family tree. Reed Pop is part of the entertainment group RX which is owned by RELX, and RELX owns LexisNexis, a data broker that holds a $22.1 million contract to be ICE’s precogs, helping the agency track people who may potentially commit a crime (and their cars, according to The Intercept) before they’ve actually broken the law.
So a group of unhappy cosplayers penned a petition asking Reedpop, which purports to “promote inclusion and diversity,” to force their parent company to divest from LexisNexis. ReedPop responded with a boilerplate statement, saying “RX, ReedPop and our event brands operate independently from other RELX businesses on an arm’s length basis. RX, ReedPop and our event brands do not sell any information or data to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
The petition reads: “How can event attendees feel safe, supported, or included when they are deliberately choosing to support the equivalent of the Empire in Star Wars, the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and other oppressive forces that fans consistently support the dismantling of on-screen and in the pages?”
Elizabeth Sweet, a Korean immigrant known in the cosplay world as Cosmic Reys, co-organized the petition with her friend group of cosplayers and Romantasy lovers (Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorns and Roses, the fanfiction that warped your sexuality) that Mallory Shoemaker, a Disney cosplayer, and Jenna Karr, who primarily cosplays romantasy book characters. (Sidenote, while this group doesn’t have a name, they’ve done panels together as The Bookish Baddies).
They wanted to send a message that “Seattle does not eff with ICE,” Sweet says, omitting the cuss word. Nearly 1,300 have signed since late January, and the Baddies have since written to electeds like Mayor Katie Wilson.
Though they aren’t advertising it, they’re tying ECCC’s relationship with ICE into their planned “Smash or Pass” panel about sexy Romantasy characters and tropes.
It’ll be much, much more about fascism than a steamy book panel usually would be (less monsterfucking, more fucking monsters). Sweet gave an example: “We find it attractive when the heroes we root for may have wings or horns or something, but what’s sexier is what they’re standing up for.”
And another: “A smashable trait is standing up for what you believe in and is advocating strongly for critiquing systems of power.”
“We’re putting pressure on our local officials, our city, and reminding nerds, ‘You could be the hero in the story that you’re reading about,” Shoemaker says. “You could be Rey, you could be Katniss.”
