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goddd okay this list is not going to be nearly as long as I wish it was but it is extreeeeemely varied, so at least we have that going for us lmao. and hopefully you find something interesting in here:

right out of the gate if you're chasing that Octavia high, Rivers Solomon's novel Sorrowland feels very very in that vein. it starts with a teenage girl escaping from a Black separatist fundie cult while heavily pregnant with the cult leader's twins, deciding to give birth to the babies in the woods and raise them there. and boy, does it get crazier from there! there are some eventual transformative body horror sci-fi elements that I shan't spoil, but it's a time. the relationships are pretty secondary and genuinely not the most fucked up thing here, but our main girlie Vern is very much into girls and trying to figure that out on top of all the other horrors.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first book in a fantasy trilogy by specfic queen NK Jemisin, and the first book in particular is really like. problematic relationship city. the protagonist is called to be an heir to a dying emperor and IMMEDIATELY gets embroiled in a love triangle with two of the gods that her family enslaves for power??? crazy shit.

I just kicked off this year reading a book called Darknesses by Lachelle Seville, which ALSO features a young Black woman fresh out of a cult (this one loves self harm and anorexia). and then she meets another Black girl who casually drops that she's Dracula, and oh boy do things get weirder from there. this book is like kind of Not Good but it is very entertaining; at a certain point you just have to turn off your brain and go with the vibes. it's sweeter than a lot of examples but listen, obsession and bloodlust are obsession and bloodust no matter how much your gf Dracula respects consent. there's a lot of murder!

this one doesn't have any supernatural bullshit afoot and is instead just regular degular #problematic, but Raven Leilani's Luster was one of my favorite books last year and follows an absolute shitshow of a young Black woman's extremely loaded and weird relationship with her older white boyfriend and his insane wife, as well as their adopted Black daughter.

anther no magic entry: I really love Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, The Serial Killer, which is about exactly what you think it's about! the narrator is a put-upon Nigerian woman whose beautiful, beloved sister has murdered her last several boyfriends and has come crying to her dutiful sister to help her clean it up each time; the plot kicks in when the murdery sister sets her sights on the narrator's boss, a doctor to whom the narrator is also attracted. I know it's a sibling relationship instead of a romantic one but you didn't specify so! I am counting it!

this one is like very very very niceys compared to everything else I'm going to put on this list but it's also pretty hot so I have to mention it: Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej is about a young, bisexual Asian-American woman struggling to get a writing career off the ground falling in love with a Notably Older and wealthier white man and figuring out how to navigate the subsequent problems both within their own interpersonal dynamic and in how their relationship is received by others.

honorary mentions: books about fucked up white women that are written by women of color who Know!!

Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng is a Victorian alternate history in which the English discovered the fairy realm and promptly did what the English did, ie, sending missionaries to teach the fairies about Jesus. the novel follows a woman traveling to the fairy kingdom to look for her missing missionary brother and promptly going insane as fairies gaslight gatekeep girlboss from all sides, complete with a side of everyone's favorite gothic horror trope: repressed sibling incest!

My Nemesis by Charmaine Craig is another very lowkey and grounded example, comparatively, but I thought it was neat and worth a mention! it's told from the POV of truly insufferable white woman writer whose emotional affair with a philosopher gets thrown for a fucking loop by the philosopher's wife, an enigmatic Chinese woman whose motivation the MC cannot guess literally at all. it's not the most exciting read in the world but the reveals hit hard and the reveals at the end made me YELL.

also for short story collections by WOC that can bring the #yikes factor in big ways I heartily endorse Roxane Gay's Difficult Women and Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties.

At the 1985 Labour party meet, the motion to support LGBT rights as a party was passed due to a block vote from mining unions.

Did he have his name written down on something?

Or is that what the people who dug him up thousands of years later decided to name him?

And how TF does he even have a fanbase?

Ötzi is a 5300-ish year old mummy, found in the Ötztal Alps in Italy (hence his name). While the earliest form of writing was emerging from Sumer at the time, Ötzi likely came from a civilisation with no writing system.

Ötzi has a fanbase because frankly he's absolutely fascinating. For a long time he was the oldest tattooed person ever discovered (in 2018 older Egyptian mummies were discovered), with 61 tattoos, a series of lines and crosses, primarily on his joints. These tattoos were likely an early form of acupuncture since he had worn joints that likely caused him pain.

The amount we've been able to study and understand about Ötzi is incredible, and he has offered us an incredible view of the European Copper Age. He was 45. He was 5"3. He was around 50kgs. We know what his final meal was, how he dressed, where he came from and how he travelled to the Ötztal region (through pollen in his lungs). We know he was involved in copper smelting (high levels of copper and arsenic in his hair). He could still have 19 descendants alive today. We know he was sick three times in the last six months before he died. We know he had whipworms. We know he was lactose intolerant.

We know he was murdered. Not killed by a stranger, or robbed. He was murdered by someone, and it was probably personal, and he did not know it was coming. He bled out, from an arrow to the back, and nobody helped him.

His last meal was elaborate. He was not on the run, or in a hurry to get away. He was not chased up those mountains. Where was he going? Why was he being followed? His body was not looted. He was a wealthy man, for his time. He had good quality clothes, shoes that people have reconstructed and hiked up the mountain in (and found surprisingly comfortable, apparently).

Weapons, too. He was found with a copper axe, a knife, arrows and an unfinished bow, baskets and medicines. These were all valuable possessions. People were not so rich back then that they could easily discard items like this- so why were they left to rot on the mountain with him? Was the fact they'd been touched by Ötzi really so repugnant to whoever was on that mountain?

There are at least 4 other people's blood on his gear. On the knife. On the arrows. The arrow that they shot him with was left in his back but the shaft was removed.

We know so much about Ötzi. We know everything about his finals hours- except for everything about Ötzi. We do not know who he was, we do not know his name, and we do not know why he was killed. His murderers stand in the shadows and will never come out into the light.

THE HUNGARIAN FLAG???