September 2025
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    I'm looking for books you would strongly recommend that feature any of these themes:
    – abusive relationships
    – women and textile/fiber arts, especially in cultural contexts where fiber arts are considered low-status work
    – textile-related magic
    – dark academia (ideally with sapphic or Jewish main characters or major themes)

    Bonus points for sapphic or Jewish main characters or major themes.

    Flaired as NSFW/trigger warning bc I want to minimize the chances people are surprised by the very dark content of the story I'm working on.

    Context: I'm working on building a magical boarding school setting in a society where fiber arts and fiber/textile related magic are low-status "women's work", for a 1-on-1 horror TTRPG campaign I'm going to run for my spouse. Think Wicked meets dark academia meets Sandry's Book (from Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic quartet), but make it sapphic horror (and definitely not for children). My main job in running the game will be to play the main villain, with whom the player character will become entangled in an abusive relationship.

    What I've read/am reading so far for this project:
    The World Cannot Give, Tara Isabella Burton — wonderful sapphic dark academia, love the tone — earnest, intense, unselfconscious, unafraid of major religious themes and unafraid of problematizing said religion
    Sandry's Book, Tamora Pierce — this is the book my spouse cited as the inspiration for its request to play a string magic user
    Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft — very helpful for getting into the mindset of the main villain I'll be playing as GM
    Lolita — ditto
    Tampa — ditto, though I don't think I'll finish this one, the author is just doing too good a job at making it viscerally unpleasant to read

    My current to-read pile for this project is:
    Gigi, by Colette — mostly to compare & contrast with Lolita
    You, Caroline Kepnes — horror story about an abusive relationship from the abuser's perspective, on my list for the same reason I read Lolita
    The Spellcoats, Diana Wynne Jones — my spouse loves her magic systems and I hear this is the one of her books that most heavily features textile-related magic
    Textiles and Gender in Antiquity: From the Orient to the Mediterranean — hoping this can provide me some historical context on the intersection of textiles and women's lives and some worldbuilding inspo
    Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber — ditto

    I hope this makes sense, happy to answer any questions if anything isn't clear! Thanks in advance for any help you can offer 🙂

    by spockface

    3 Comments

    1. flux_and_flow on

      For textile related magic there is a trilogy by Rowenna Miller book titles are Torn, Fray and Rule

    2. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado — Memoir about an abusive sapphic relationship.

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