Sarah Guan

#MSWL

Maybe I’ve been reading too much news lately, but… #MSWL: SF & fantasy where characters’ core political/policy positions evolve over the course of the story, not because they’ve discovered a *conspiracy,* but because they’ve educated themselves about communities and their needs.

Like many fantasy readers, I love a good boarding school novel. I want one that tackles the Anglo-American boarding school as a tool by which socioeconomic class stratification, western imperialism, and patriarchy are taught and reinforced among impressionable children. #MSWL

tonight’s #mswl: this protagonist. she is beautiful and powerful and just *everything.* tell me her story. #sff

YES PLEASE (I even wrote a #MSWL tweet about this a while ago!)
twitter.com/sarah_guan/sta…

There is definitely someone out there writing science fiction or fantasy with this exact aesthetic, and I WANT IT. #mswl

YES PLEASE, send me all your equestrian librarian fantasy heroines #mswl

Someone write me the science fiction or fantasy take on this. #mswl

Somebody write me a fantasy novel starring a harpy eagle shapeshifter. I need more terrifyingly weird-looking Animagi in my life. #MSWL

A Valentine’s Day #MSWL: grand, complex, diverse, epic science fiction and fantasy—with a fraught central romance that has lasting consequences for the world.

A type of primary relationship I’d love to see more in #SFF: comrades-in-arms—not only warrior/soldier siblings-in-battle, but also people fighting for common causes in politics, in the workplace, in civil society, &c. who believe viscerally in their purpose & in each other #MSWL

#MSWL. It would make me AND the awesome Paola Crespo really happy. 😇

After Trump’s bizarre statement about exchanging love letters w/ Kim Jong Un, I can’t help thinking it‘d be an interesting SFF novel idea: 2 unstable dictators w/ huge egos inherit world-ending arsenals & a fraught standoff, begin a diplomatic correspondence, & fall in love
#MSWL

Given today's events, refreshing this #MSWL. Are you writing #SFF about misogynists getting their comeuppance and women tearing down the patriarchy with their bare hands? Tell your agent to send it to me.

#MSWL: secondary world SFF political systems based on historical governments that weren’t quasi-absolute monarchies—e.g. the Japanese shogunate, the Iroquois Confederacy, the Ancient Greek polis, the elected Khans of the Mongol Empire, the city-states of the Aztec Triple Alliance

#MSWL: anti-colonialist adult #SFF that’s not just about throwing off the hegemon’s rule, but also the complexities of economic independence, recovering lost cultural heritage, & constituting a government that doesn’t replicate oppressive structures put in place by the colonizer.

#MSWL: adult #SFF where the real enemy isn’t one malicious individual or group—it’s a system, but the toppling of said system would inflict massive collateral damage on unsuspecting innocents. And then, if the revolution succeeds—what happens next?

#MSWL: feminist #SFF

I don’t mean “strong heroine succeeds in a sexist society.” That exists, and much of it isn’t feminist in a way that reflects the intellectual underpinnings of the concept.

I want “strong heroines work together—intersectionally—to dismantle the patriarchy.”

Is it still #MSWL day?

Someone send me an adult SFF novel centering a messy, diverse found family who have to overthrow the empire, or uncover a plot, or fight off invaders—but at the end of the day, you know they’re doing it to save each other as much as to “save the world.”

YES, THIS. #MSWL

I’m a multilingual person who often translates for loved ones whose first language isn’t English. It’s a whole set of social interactions and levels of access to systemic power that shape communities and conflicts.

I’d love to see this examined in #SFF.