So I Just Finished Iron Widow Like. An Hour Ago. And Oh My GOD. It's DitF If It Was Peak Like First Of

So I just finished Iron Widow like. An hour ago. And oh my GOD. It's DitF if it was peak like 😭😭 first of all, the fact that there was an ACTUAL love triangle??? Love. LOVEEEEEE LOVE LOVE. But I think my favorite thing about the book is that there was no "redemption" for Zetian. She wasn't tamed. She wasn't made to bow down to authority. She wasn't "softened." She BECAME Female Rage. She encapsulated it. And yet, she still has a heart. She still cares for Yizhi. She still cares for Shimin. But love doesn't "tame" her. Love makes her stronger and I LOVE that so much 😭 I love that she gets to be morally dubious and damn near insane like YES. YES !!!!! YES. AND I LOVE THAT YIZHI AND SHIMIN ARE BASICALLY LIKE "go wifey we love you so much ♡" through most of the book 😭. I love that she had to use a cane or a wheelchair but this didn't diminish her power or worth as a person. I love that Shimin and Yizhi never try to control her, but they work with her. I loved Yizhi and Shimin's little interactions so much before they kissed. Like I was literally losing it to my friends like "GUYS. GUYS I'M NOT CRAZY. GUYS." And I wasn't and I was SO happy. I love that Zetian never forgives her family. Good. Fuck em ♡ I LOVE this book. (I literally wrote half a fic the day I read the hospital scene 😭 and now I need to write fluff of the triangle cooking together cuz the ending SHATTERED me.) I'm so so SO excited for the sequel this December. And the author is INCREDIBLE. They're so cool 😭 I've seen a few of their shorts on YouTube and I've been meaning to read this book since senior year (so like. A year, give or take a couple months) and now that I've read it?? UGH. AMAZING. AMAZINGGGGG.

NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE 🪓🩸😈🤓

Me remembering Undertale

i keep seeing people in their late teens/early twenties having a "[X] content intended for younger audiences does not feel satisfying to me anymore but i don't know where to start to branch out into adult fiction" moment and i thought i would give some recommendations for adult fiction for my fellow creepy crawly queer people. all or at least a LOT of it will be on the darker and more fucked up side bc i primarily engage with horror and thriller media personally but feel free to add on with more or recommendations from other genres :)

edit: i am continuing to add to this list so there might be new recs (highlighted in pink) in here every once in a while! also want to add that there's a variety of POC, queer, and disabled authors in here as well, i am also all of the above (asian, bi/aro, poly, disabled) and tried to incorporate as many of their wickedly talented, compelling narratives as possible. that's all, happy reading!

A Certain Hunger, Chelsea G. Summers

A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E Schwab*

A Dowry of Blood, S.G Gibson

Animal, Lisa Taddeo*

A Ripple of Power and Promise, Jordan A. Day*

Bunny, Mona Awad*

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi*

Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh*

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

Dead Girls Don't Say Sorry, Alex Ritany*

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk*

Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh*

Fruiting Bodies, Kathryn Harlan*

Goddess of Filth, V. Castro*

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski

If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha*

Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao

Jackal, Erin E. Adams*

Juniper and Thorn, Ava Reid*

Kindred, Octavia Butler*

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin*

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee*

Rabbits, Terry Miles*

Scorched Grace, Margot Douaihy*

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

She is a Haunting, Trang Thahn Tran

Slewfoot, Brom*

Sorrowland, Rivers Soloman

Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo

Supper Club, Lara Williams*

The Centre, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi*

The Change, Kirsten Miller

The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling*

The Dreamer Trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher*

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter, Soraya Palmer*

The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri

The Locked Tomb, Tamsyn Muir

The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling*

The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan*

The Unfamiliar Garden, Benjamin Percy*

Vicious, V. E Shwab

Wake, Siren, Nina MacLaughlin*

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher*

A lil drawing of how I imagined Wu Zetian, purely by vibes, while reading iron widow. Also based a bit on the book cover, especially the outfit. Anyway I enjoyed the book, it was very intense and fun. ALSO, any cool ppl please add me on StoryGraph!!! Luke114

Not my best work, very messy, but I also haven’t had much time to spend on it and it’s a relatively quick drawing. It was a fun process tho. And I really wanna draw her again but like full body and with her wings.

we love Karlach