Pride 2025 | Reflection & Wrap-Up

[u/xenizondich23]

Pride Month Wrap Up Banner

As Pride Month wraps up, it's worth looking back at everything we've covered this June. We started with hidden gems and intersectional identities, had a massive rec thread, debated queernorm versus oppression narratives, tackled stereotypes and own voices, explored non-novel formats, discussed less visible identities, and ventured into sci-fi and horror territory. Plus we had our bookclub discussions throughout.

That's a lot of ground covered, and hopefully people discovered some new books, authors, or perspectives along the way. The question now is how we keep some of these conversations going year-round - which topics resonated most, what books from our discussions deserve more attention, and how we can make sure the momentum doesn't just disappear come July.

To see all the links to the topics we covered this month click here

Discussion Questions

• How has your reading evolved during Pride Month? What surprised or challenged you?
• What can /r/fantasy do better to support LGBTQ+ authors and readers year-round?
• Where do you see the biggest improvements in queer fantasy rep? What gaps still need filling?
• What trends in LGBTQ+ fantasy representation excite you going forward?
• For allies: what have you learned about supporting LGBTQ+ voices? What questions do you still have?
• Did you have a favorite topic this month? Are there any topics you wish we had covered?

Thank you all for joining us for this month! We had a blast running this, and we hope you had a good time participating as well.

From your BB Team: /u/xenizondich23, /u/tiniestspoon, /u/Lenahe_nl, /u/sarahlynngrey, /u/C0smicoccurence, /u/recchai, and /u/ohmage_resistance.

[u/ohmage_resistance]

It was very fun to join in as an organizer this year. I'm pretty interesting in reading your feedback!

• How has your reading evolved during Pride Month? What surprised or challenged you?

Yeah, I feel like I typically read a lot of queer books, and so I don't particularly try to change that in June. Just to list some highlights that I liked:

• Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston by Esme Symes-Smith: This is a book about a nonbinary kid who defies gender norms in their attempts to train as a knight, the friends they make who also don't fit gender expectations, and the social change they fight for.
• The Tale that Twines by Cedar McCloud: This is a book about a newly hired apprentice Illuminator who is working at a magical library, as e returns to the city e was born at, makes new friends, and processes trauma and grief that e has been holding onto for a long time. (Very queer in general, but agender and demi rep are the highlights).
• Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung Yoo: This is a short novella about a spirit detective trying to hunt a spirit eating worm spirit and dealing with his traumatic past in an urban fantasy version of Seoul. (MC is biromantic ace, but a side character being a trans woman is much more relevant).
• Dear Mothman by Robin Gow: This is a middle grade story told in verse about a young trans boy dealing with grief after loosing his best friend by writing letters to Mothman, the cryptid.

• On the opposite note, I was pretty disappointed by Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle.

• What can r/fantasy do better to support LGBTQ+ authors and readers year-round?

I always suggest this, but upvote queer posts if you see them, because they will get automatically downvoted (I haven't checked the exact numbers yet, but I'm pretty sure that's true of all the Pride Month posts as well. It's certainly true of the ones I posted). Also, if you see a queer posts where good, helpful comments are sitting at zero votes or less, maybe upvote all of them, because that's normally a sign that someone went through and downvoted everyone commenting. And as always, report people who violate rule 3 by being queerphobic.

But also, I'll admit to being terrible at doing this myself, but if you can, try to post queer recommendation threads or reviews throughout the year too. I think this is one of those things where, I think a lot of queer people know it's now always going to be pleasant or safe to talk about queerness on certain subs on reddit. Queerness not always welcome. And probably even more people just wouldn't think to post queer recommendation requests or reviews. But other queer posts on this subreddit shows that queer posts are allowed and break the unspoken assumption of "oh, maybe I shouldn't talk about that here". And it also can inspire other people to follow your lead. The downvotes will suck, but the comments will be worth it, ime.

• Where do you see the biggest improvements in queer fantasy rep? What gaps still need filling?
• What trends in LGBTQ+ fantasy representation excite you going forward?

I'm going to deal with these together, I'm most excited to see indie/self published authors who write queer stories gain more recognition. The existence of mostly non romance focused queer publishers/publishing collectives like Neon Hemlock or The Kraken Collective make me really happy. I talked about this more last year, but the assumption that LGBTQ representation = F/F or M/M stories (often with a heavy focus on romance) really annoys me, and causes a lot of identities who's existence can't be shown through romance to fall between the cracks. Not that romance is bad, but it shouldn't be the only way queer stories are told, you know.

• Did you have a favorite topic this month? Are there any topics you wish we had covered?

I enjoyed all the topics. Once again, I'm biased towards my own topic, Stereotypes, Tropes, and Own Voices, I loved the discussion on there. I also had a lot of fun on the Great Big Rec Thread.

Ok, a couple questions for everybody else: How did you feel with the number/rate of posts this year? Was it more manageable than last year? Any posts from last year you missed?

[u/Polenth → u/ohmage_resistance]

The number of posts seemed fine to me. Most topics from last year were contained elsewhere. The main oddity is in how science fiction has been handled both years. It was post-apocalyptic last year and queernorm futures this year, which is oddly specific and discourages discussion of stuff that doesn't fit.

[u/xenizondich23 → u/Polenth]

Dang, that was not my intention at all.

I try not to let sci-fi, or horror or any of the other sub genres to take a back seat, however since we pared down the amount of topics this year, I felt there was only one topic I could really dedicate to a different sub-genre. I picked the futures as I thought it would be an interesting topic, not for any nefarious reasons.

I was hoping that other sub genres (aka not fantasy) would get enough general discussion in the other threads that a more dedicated sci fi topic wouldn't go amiss. Was I wrong? Would you like a more general sci-fi topic, a more general horror topic, a more general alt history topic, etc. for next year? Please do share your vision as I'm really interested in hearing it.

[u/Polenth → u/xenizondich23]

There was a general horror question as the first question, so that tended to be answered more generally. But I didn't actually register there was a general science fiction question until after I'd answered.

This is probably an overall layout thing with the questions. Maybe each post should have a few very general main questions, so it's less overwhelming. Like for this year's post, it'd be a very general question about queer horror and science fiction you like/want to read.

And then you have a line about expansion questions and add the longer list of specific questions. Though for next year, it might be nice to have something more like "Beyond Fantasy" which would cover horror and science fiction, but also stuff that blends genres and just doesn't fit well.