(content warning: discussion of assaults, and some bullet points. I hate that those and em-dashes need to be addressed these days.)
At the Sinners & Stardust dark romance convention this past weekend, the boundary between fantasy and reality cracked wide open, and what spilled out was horrifying.
One cosplayer, Animus, was groped across his body, with hands shoved down his pants. His body had been painted with sweat-resistant paint, and was rubbed over so aggressively by multiple people that the paint was smeared off. Patrons tried getting him to tell them where he was staying. Unknown to him, one of them had hidden an AirTag down his pants, and he realized it only after getting back to his room and getting notification from Apple. That level of stalking is flat-out terrifying. Meanwhile, a volunteer strolled around flashing attendees with a giant strap-on, asking strangers “Wanna see something?” in elevators and public areas. Authors and narrators were also repeatedly harassed with lewd comments, turning what was meant to be a celebration of dark romance into a harrowing assault on consent and basic respect.
This was not “edgy fun.” This was assault, stalking, and harassment, a fantasy acted out on real people without their consent. It’s exactly what I’ve feared for years: that the blurred lines of dark romance would eventually bleed into real-world behavior.
The core issue isn’t the existence of dark romance or erotica itself. Let’s be honest for a moment. Plenty of us have private folders for our own guilty pleasures. I call mine “Depraved Shit,” and there’s no chance anyone will ever get to see it (I’m pretty sure I’ve made up some kinks that would get me committed). The problem is the way we’ve allowed “dark” to become a free pass for anything and everything, including horror, and we hold not yucking anyone’s yums to such a sacred degree that those who do speak out about anthing are the ones told to be quiet lest they yuck any yums, or are met with a shrug. What do you expect? It’s dark.
If we do nothing, then it may be only a matter of time before the wrong people step in and do so.
Community Reactions: On Threads, Reddit, and Beyond
Online, the fallout from Sinners & Stardust has sparked raw, urgent conversations about where dark romance fandom may have gone wrong. Some lean toward accountability, while others are lamenting how assumptions about consent are slipping. On Reddit’s /r/romancelandia, one user captured the frustration clearly:
“This is just more evidence that we also need to have that conversation about Dark Romance, critical consumption, and community harm vs individual consumer choices. Because definitely not all Dark Romance readers, but also Dark Romance community norms led to criminal sexual harassment of men doing their jobs.”
Another commenter added a needed wake-up call:
“Honestly I don’t know if defending a fandom is the right primary response to that story. … It is the community of people who love dark romance and go to cons who are responsible for keeping each other… safe and healthy.”
Over in /r/DarkRomance, anger and betrayal ran deep as there are actually people defending the criminals and blaming victims:
“People are already jumping on the ‘you write/read/enjoy dark romance so what did you expect’ bandwagon. Victim blaming on top of this is insanity.”
Meanwhile, a broader perspective on Threads frames the incident as a symptom of lost boundaries:
“We can talk about Sinners & Stardust and say people have ‘no home training,’ and ‘no boundaries’ and ‘consent was learned as children’…”
Taken together, these voices reflect a community at a crossroads—not wanting to throw out the genre, but recognizing that something must change if we don’t want to keep repeating these dark patterns.
How We Got Here
My concern isn’t new. It started years ago with Twilight. That series was marketed to children, portrayed stalking, control, and even sexual assault (Jacob forcing a kiss on Bella as she struggled to get him off) as romantic. Marketed to children. I was deeply concerned about this due to certain themes in the books. Had it been an adult book, I wouldn’t have thought twice. But children.
Then came Fifty Shades of Grey. Suddenly, BDSM-lite was being mainstreamed, but stripped of its core principle: consent. I struggled with this not so much for content as that it was a fanfic of books ostensibly written for and absolutely marketed to kids…and the books were paired with branded alcohol and sex toys. After all, nothing says “safe exploration of kink” like promoting alcohol consumption alongside restraints.
The marketing literally encouraged readers to take a page out those books and act them out in their real lives. It was no longer “just fiction” anymore, and we could no longer say “it’s just a book” when it was being sold as a how-to of sorts. And when we now have books about doctors raping coma patients, the ante has been upped.
“It’s Just Fiction” Is a Lie We Need to Stop Telling
We all know fiction has power. Every one of us can name books that shaped our beliefs, perspectives, or how we handled real-life situations. To say “it’s just fiction” is to ignore decades of psychology and lived experience.
- Research shows that when readers are “transported” into a story, their beliefs are more likely to be influenced.
- The American Psychological Association confirms that stories can shift empathy, attitudes, and perspectives.
- Social neuroscience research shows fiction engages the same brain networks we use for real-life social experiences, meaning stories train us to respond as if they were real.
- Paul Bloom in The Atlantic points out that novels and films shape moral compasses and empathy.
We have not evolved enough as a species that we should just presume that most people will think critically and compartmentalize fiction.
Where We Already Accept Limits
The idea that “people should be trusted to do the right thing” sounds nice. But in practice, humans don’t always handle unrestricted freedom well. That’s why society accepts limitations:
- Hard drugs: Oregon decriminalized them, which I supported. But the experiment backfired. Overdoses and crime skyrocketed, to the point that there were no police available to handle most calls, and one man, who’d been hit by a car when crossing a road, even died when there were no avaiable ambulances due to the number of overdoses. Many who originally favored repeal ended up supporting reinstated restrictions. Good intentions and the belief that adults could make safe decisions couldn’t override reality.
- Driving: Nobody argues licenses are censorship. We accept them because vehicles in the wrong hands cause devastation to others who aren’t consenting to the risks.
- Medicine: Antibiotics aren’t sold over-the-counter. Even if most people would use them responsibly, enough would misuse them to create resistance, which harms everyone.
- Food safety: Regulations exist because, without them, some companies would cut corners with disastrous results.
The lesson: we don’t just say “it’s the people, not the thing.” We create guardrails. Sometimes that means inconveniencing responsible people for the sake of protecting others.
The Lines We Already Draw
We already accept limits in fiction, too. If a book depicted a 40-year-old man romantically pursuing a 14-year-old—or twelve-year-olds engaging in kinky sex—we’d demand heads roll. Nobody would accept that as “just fiction.” We might begrudgingly acknowledge that they have the right to publish (it helps us know who to never allow around us), but we also have the right to collectively shun The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover’s Code of Conduct by Philip R. Greaves II, and to push Amazon to deplatform the NAMBLA-supporter. Some yums are too dangerous to tolerate. Supporting the right to exist is not the same as supporting acceptance, marketing, or mainstream access.
This principle also plays out in other fandoms. Jut recently, Romance Con, which was organized by Mischief Management, faced criticism for inviting Julie Soto, whose debut novel Rose in Chains originated as Dramione fanfiction. Many authors pulled out to stand against perceived indirect support for J.K. Rowling, given her well-publicized anti-trans views. Nobody said the company shouldn’t be allowed to host the convention. But many presenters and attendees exercised their rights to say, “No, I won’t be part of this.” Some spoke out publicly, some refused to attend. Others chose to go. Rights can coexist. The company was free to run the event, and individuals were free to boycott it or speak against it.
The same principle applies here. Nobody’s calling for bans. But we also don’t have to sit silently and accept every work under the excuse that “it’sn just fiction.”
Literotica: The “Wild West” That Still Has Limits
Literotica is one of the most uncensored erotica platforms on the internet. It allows nearly every flavor of sexual fantasy imaginable, from dark romance to non-con (non-consensual, aka rape), dub-con (dubious consent), slash to blood-relations incest fantasy, and more. That’s why it’s often considered the “wild west” of erotic writing communities.
But even Literotica has limits. The bar is extremely high, as it should be, but it’s still there.
Their rules require that stories involving non-consensual or coercive sex must show the “victim” receiving some form of benefit, usually in the form of an orgasm or physical pleasure. In other words, the platform allows non-con fantasy so long as it’s not framed as one-sided abuse without any payoff to the character. They don’t allow depictions of torture for torture’s sake, or completely one-directional harm.
- No sexual content with underage characters (strict 18+).
- No bestiality with real animals.
- No snuff (erotica involving murder).
- No sexual assault of characters who are unconscious or unable to respond in any way (e.g., coma patients or someone slipped a roofie).
These rules still allow a tremendous variety of stories, including scat, knife-play with cutting, forced breeding, and so much else. That so much is allowed doen’t mean Literotica endorses the material as “healthy.” Instead, it’s an acknowledgement that readers may want to explore dark fantasies, but there must be a boundary somewhere. So even on one of the internet’s least censored erotica sites, those boundaries exist.
Importantly, Literotica doesn’t argue that such material shouldn’t exist at all. Their stance is essentially that they have house rules for their platform, but if you want to publish elsewhere, that’s your right.
Publishing vs. Accepting
This brings us to the broader principle. No one in this conversation is arguing that people shouldn’t be allowed to print and sell their own work, no matter how egregious the subject matter. That would be outright censorship, and almost nobody supports that.
But the right to publish does not obligate the rest of us to accept it, distribute it, or stay silent. Just as Mischief Managed can put on a Harry Potter convention, and Rowling supporters can attend, presenters and guests also have the right to boycott or publicly refuse involvement. Freedom of expression cuts both ways.
The same goes for dark romance. Authors may write whatever we want. But readers and communities must be equally free to raise their voices, to say, this goes too far, and to create environments where predators who may be inspired by books know their behavior won’t be ignored.
Silence is what predators thrive on. If convention creeps, harassers, or stalkers think the community will shrug and dismiss it as “just dark fantasy,” they’ll keep doing it. But if they believe the majority will speak up, they’ll think twice. And more importantly, potential victims will know they aren’t alone.
Following Literotica’s Lead: Community Limits Without Censorship
What I’m suggesting isn’t radical. It’s essentially that the dark romance community should follow the same baseline that even Literotica enforces. If even the “wild west” of erotic writing sees the need for limits, then surely the mainstream dark romance community can do the same when it comes to what we share and how we talk about things. This wouldn’t mean harassing or silencing writers. It wouldn’t mean bans. It would mean making it clear that as a community we’ve had enough issues, including assaults at conventions, blurred lines between fantasy and reality, and unsafe marketing, and that we need to start putting our feet down about what we’re willing to accept.
This is hard, because no one wants to feel like they’re supporting censorship. But censorship is not the same as a community saying that we won’t mainstream everything. Writers remain free to publish wherever they want. Readers remain free to find what they want. But the community has a right, and I’d argue, a responsibility, to draw limits on what gets normalized and celebrated.
We’re living in a time of unprecedented book bans. Entire states are pushing library purges. And in Kansas, one church literally encouraged its members to check out LGBTQIA+ books from a public library and simply not return them in an attempt to disappear those stories without going through any formal process, leaving libraries short of books and without the funds to replace them.
Enforcing guidelines doesn’t always mean marching or issuing bans, and a guideline isn’t a legal ban on anything. Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, “That crosses the line.” Sometimes it’s choosing not to promote or review a work. Sometimes it’s silence. The absence of support can itself be a form of boundary.
If we don’t act, others will, and the result will be lost access to everything they can take
Why Guidelines Protect Us
The community’s reluctance to set any limits has consequences. If we don’t self-regulate, politicians and pearl-clutchers will step in, and their solutions won’t be subtle. Already:
- Age verification laws in states like Texas, Georgia, and Florida require ID uploads for adult websites.
- YouTube now asks users for IDs or uses AI to estimate age.
- The UK’s Online Safety Act enforces ID and facial recognition for adult content.
- Politicians are openly discussing reviving the Comstock Act, which historically banned mailing of “obscene” materials, including information about birth control, birth control itself, and books.
If Comstock-style laws return, it won’t just be porn sites that disappear. Digital books, print erotica, anything shipped through the mail…it could all end up something only Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Community guidelines may feel uncomfortable, but they are protection.
Final Thoughts
The Sinners & Stardust disaster is not a one-off. It’s the inevitable result of treating “dark” as “anything goes” and excusing it all as “just fiction.” But fiction shapes us. It always has.
We already accept limits in countless areas of life. We already draw lines in fiction when children are involved. We already reject harmful groups like NAMBLA while upholding free speech. And we already see in other fandoms, like with Mischief Managed, that respecting rights doesn’t mean accepting silence.
At the end of the day, this is all about protecting access to the stories we love by being the ones to show our iron-handed fascist authoritarians that we are willing to draw the lines so they don’t have to. If they find reason to step in—and they’re already a foot in the door—they’ll take everything.
Sometimes we have to admit that this is why we can’t have nice things. A few will always take advantage. When the enjoyment of a story leads to harm in real life, sometimes the safety of real people outweighs our desire to feel that we have no limits.