This is probably redundant given that my wrap-up is going to go up next week, and you’ll all see just what a wretched month this was, and it’s possible no one’s even all that hyped about what my remaining Pride posts were going to be, but figured I’d explain why I’m cutting my Pride celebrations short a week early.

the books

It’s Tuesday as I’m drafting this, and I’m in the middle of three books. So far this month, I’ve read, in order:

1. Lava Red Feather Blue by Molly Ringle
2. Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan
3. Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee
4. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
5. Jay’s Gay Agenda by Jason June
6. The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer
7. May the Best Man Win by ZR Ellor
8. I Think I Love You by Auriane Desombre
9. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Given that I’m in the middle of those last three, there’s still hope for at least two of them, but I’m pretty sure I can say with confidence that of the 9 books for Pride that I read this month, I truly loved two of them. And they weren’t even actually on my TBR! My goodness, I’m exhausted.

1. This was fine. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, but the writing was just shit. It felt like I was reading something straight off of Fanfiction.net when I was hoping for AO3, and it just bummed me out. I was buddy reading this, and it took my friend over two weeks to finish the last thirty pages of it because she just couldn’t get through it, and hard same.
2. I actively did not like this book. There’s a lot of “if you’re not out, you’re not doing queer right” rhetoric in this, and even when the character who’s saying that understands how harmful that is, she still pushes her girlfriend to come out. These two were toxic af for each other, and it was not a good look.
3. I should have given this four stars, but I gave it five. Honestly, it was a three star book teetering on two, and the thing that skyrocketed it was the fact that the MC didn’t end up with the emotionally abusive boyfriend he dated for the majority of the book. But that was still in there, and it’s left a bad taste.
4. Heyyyyyy, OLS was amazing, no surprises here! This gave me hope that all was not lost.
5. And then I was promptly proven wrong. In my review, I think I describe it best–“The MC says oh my god a lot, but instead of g-o-d, it’s g-a-w-d, and I feel like that describes perfectly why I don’t like it.” This was immature, unnecessarily dramatic, involved cheating, and no one ever saw consequences for their shitty behavior.
6. This was a personal preference, but I don’t like hard scifi, and this swung out of astronauts in space into something I’m very much not about. That said, it also made the story feel pretty pointless, and even if that hadn’t happened, the characters were flat, and the writing was bad.
7. I’m in the middle of this right now, but I haven’t seen the greatest reviews for it, and I’m not super vibing with it in the first 100 pages, so we’ll see.
8. I’m nearly done with this, and there’s no way the last 100 pages can save it because the level of emotional manipulation that all of the characters put each other through is gross.
9. Obviously, TSOA is beautiful, and I want to pledge my undying love to it.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS

Like???

This just isn’t fair. I’ve been in such a huge fantasy mood, but I was so excited to take a month-long diversion into contemporary. I even got a few urban fantasies for Pride just in case I needed to keep myself afloat, and the first two were so bad that I didn’t even want to open the third. I’m so upset. This month was supposed to be queer as hell and so much fun, and instead, I’ve officially shelved my TBR and am reading Queen of Air and Darkness next to cleanse my demoralized heart.

the movies

What have I even watched this month? The second season of Feel Good was amazing, but then it got cancelled. Erin & I swerved into horror for almost our entire weekend together with the one exception of 4th Man Out, which was this bizarre level of queerbaiting that neither of us expected from a movie that stars a gay actor, so that was fun. It also meant that we ignored the rest of our Pride movies that we had planned and just kept watching horror. We also missed a week due to a power outage at her house, and though we’re planning to swing back into Pride for Boys in the Band, I also think we may be rewatching As Above, So Below soon. We watched a few movies for Pride back in May, and we either did two or three slow movies with subtitles in a row, and it kind of ruined us for wanting to watch anymore, which was half of our planned movies, and I just–it’s not been a good movie month for Pride, either, somehow.

I have been rewatching Sense8 which is awesome, but watching four horror movies plus a partial rewatch of Hill House has got me now firmly in that mood, and so, even when queer movies might have saved this month, horror came in with an unexpected flex.

I don’t know, y’all. I cannot.

the novel

This is both a win and a lose? Obviously, as you can see, this post is going up on a Thursday, which is when I was supposed to be posting a new short story. It was going to feature my favorite ace queen, Soraya Dali, from space thieves, and I was so excited about it that I was even doing an entire story spotlight on it next week. Originally, though, when I was planning out my Pride posts, I was actively writing space thieves, so I thought this’d be the perfect time to go ham on it. I also told myself that I needed to write all of my short stories prior to June beginning, and then I didn’t do that. I’ve been fine with it so far, and I thought things would continue to work out into the final week, but then something else happened.

I’ve started writing again! It’s been a weird beginning to the year in which I didn’t write anything with any sort of continuity, and I’ve just been flitting around to different stories. As is evident above when I said I was working on space thieves in May. I’ve swung wildly between stories, writing a little under ten chapters for each before running off to something else. I even started rewriting Saints, which I’d like to keep doing eventually, but it didn’t quite hold my attention, either.

And then, like the bitter monster that he is, my vampire went full stubborn and decided it was finally time. I’ve been wishy washy on everything that I’ve been working on thus far, so you could say that this may end soon, too, but I’ve also been trying to write Andrew’s novel all year, and it feels pretty firmly set now that I’ve finally figured it out, so I anticipate this carrying me through the rest of the year. That said, my ability to write short stories just tanks whenever I’m working on an actual novel, and though I definitely could have pushed myself this week to just get it done, I’m also exhausted physically from two very long days in a row, and I just don’t want to.

All of this combined means that my excitement for Pride is now nonexistent, and the idea of cracking open another queer contemporary or watching something that isn’t a horror is just–no thanks, not even a little. Even writing my Sense8 review yesterday was something I had to drag my feet to do, and I love that show more than I can accurately put into words. Thus, this is, sadly, the end of my Pride celebrations. I’m off to go read a 900-page fantasy tome, rewatch one of my favorite found footage films, and drop the longest TBR post I’ve ever put together.