#bc i can defo see that being an underlying thing

[woman-respecter]

eh, I'm kind of tired of the relentless promotion of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as feminist when all those female characters exist in relation to men, and that was the message I felt it sent to me: women are great but only if they don't forget their place. Those women are just better written than most because the original mangaka is a woman, but I've read a lot of Arakawa's stuff and it feels like she's really into this kind of promotion of traditional women in a way that has its pluses in showing how fully-faceted those women are, but never seems to really question those roles in a larger sense. I get why it appeals to people but I wouldn't exactly call it "feminist."

(I also have longstanding beef of how people use that to excuse the really fucked up messages about race in that show/manga, especially to dump on the original FMA anime which does that aspect much much better and whose female characters felt a lot more genuinely independent to me, but whatever. Neither is a bastion of feminism lol and don't want to make this about fandom beef)

It's also not necessary because there are a lot of anime that are outspokenly feminist and center women. Revolutionary Girl Utena being the obvious one, and got me through the 2016 election aftermath with episodes like when Utena beats Touga after he defeats her the first time, showing how women can triumph eventually even when the odds are wholly stacked against us. And it has a really probing analysis of the patriarchy and heteronormativity woven throughout the whole show.

A whole bunch of magical girl anime (not the entire genre, some suck and are made for gross dudes, but a lot of them, especially the 90s ones are aimed at women - Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura etc). Sayo Yamamoto's stuff that isn't Yuri on Ice - not that that show isn't great and gay and cute and doesn't say interesting things in its occasional one-off subplots about women, but it's obviously focused on men. But people who liked it who want great women-centric stuff should watch her Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and Michiko and Hatchin, both centered on women and very feminist in their themes, albeit in a way that requires you to pay attention and think and watch the whole show so you occasionally get Tumblrites without reading comprehension missing the point of them. I was really surprised, given the kind of trashy title, by the anime Maria the Virgin Witch, which is all about fighting patriarchal ideas about sex in fantasy medieval Europe. Also, Yurikuma Arashi by the same creator as Utena is a really good analysis of the ways that lesbians are portrayed in Japanese media and by the broader patriarchy.

For as much misogyny as there is in anime, the stuff that does engage with feminism can often be pretty radical and smart and does it better than you'll see in a lot of other media. It's like having that low hum of misogyny in the medium as a whole builds up a rage in some of its creators that just explodes in the stuff they make. Same with how it often engages with queer themes, tbh.

And then there's just that anime has a lot more female-character-centered stuff even if it isn't "feminist" exactly. Like stuff about women where the story and world is centered on women that you can just put on as a comfort watch. Love Live or something lol

you do bring up a good point about fma, i kinda forgot about that bc i watched it like a decade ago. rgu is really great and i defo recommend it even tho it was directed by a man. yurikuma is actually my fave anime of all time but does seem sexist and fan servicey on the surface. and i love love live and the other cgdct anime but it feels like there is always an underlying misogyny of that genre, knowing how the male fans and creators are. if i were to recommend a comfort watch i would go with k-on bc it has a female director.

thanks for the recs!

[likeshipsonthesea]

When he first started at Samwell, things were rough for a bit. Ollie’d never been away from home for that long before, and he had a tight-knit family, him and his mom and his sister. He called them every day but he still missed the comfort of a hug or the easiness of teasing his little sister about her skinned knees from soccer. Samwell was nice, don’t get him wrong, but even with all of its wonders, it wasn’t home.

Wicks made it better. God, so much better. Ollie’d never had someone who complemented him so perfectly. If he started a sentence, he knew Wicks could finish it. If he was feeling shitty, he knew that Wicks could make it better. And it went both ways. Ollie understood Wicks in such an instinctual way that it almost scared him. It would have, if he hadn’t liked it so much.

So things were tough, but he had Wicks, and Wicks had him. Sometimes it felt like they only had each other here. “Hey,” Ollie remembers Wicks saying back in their frog year, one night when he was sleeping over in Ollie’s dorm, the room dark and their voices quiet. “Do you ever get, like. A little jealous?”

“Of Bitty?” Wicks made an affirmative noise. “Yeah, kinda.”

Cause the thing was, Samwell Men’s Hockey was probably the most inclusive team Ollie had ever been on. They wanted everyone there to feel loved and accepted. Ollie definitely felt like he could be himself in front of them without question. But there was a center group, and Bitty was a part of it, and they weren’t.

Sometimes it was hard not to be jealous of him. All three of them were frogs that year, yet only Bitty was adopted so fully. Ransom and Holster took him and Wicks under their wings defense-wise, but they weren’t their frogs in the way Bitty was. Bitty was bright and kind and warm, and Ollie and Wicks thought he was a pretty chill dude on and off the ice (well, aside from that checking thing) but sometimes looking at him just hurt.

Time went on and the hurt mellowed, of course. They picked their own frogs, had their own groups. Ollie hung out with the other philosophy kids, and tagged along when Wicks went out with his trivia group. He had a book club he went to weekly that read almost exclusively YA sci-fi novels. He and his roommates had a movie-night at least once every two-weeks.

(It was actually after one of those movie sessions that Ollie realized he kind of maybe was in love with Wicks. He’d been on his phone the whole movie and his roommate laughed, chirping him, asking “What could be more important than the love story of Captain America and the Winter Soldier?” and Ollie realized he’d rather be texting Wicks than ogling Chris Evans’ ass.)

(Their first date was actually to see Civil War. They made out the whole time, much to the chagrin of the nerd girls behind them.)

So they had other things in their lives, and their hurt at not being accepted like Bitty disappeared almost entirely. It sat in the back of their minds if it existed at all, and if there were moments-- like kiss the ice, or graduation-- where they felt excluded, they had each other, and they had home.

When Holster and Ransom called them over to the Haus that rainy Monday morning, Ollie didn’t think anything of it. The semester was only halfway done and possibly Holster needed help calming Ransom out of his coral reef mode again? Ollie really had no idea.

Then Holster held out the keys.

“Why us?” Ollie heard himself ask, after listening to a long speech about the sanctity of the Haus attic.

He was expecting something about the d-man loft tradition (even though that would have fit Nursey and Dex just fine) or some waffling about how Wicks had experience with the supernatural (he frequented the Buzzfeed Unsolved videos far too often) but that wasn’t what they said.

“You’re a part of this team, guys,” Ransom said. “You’re hardworking, you look after the younger guys, you care.”

They shared a look and Holster went on, “We want you guys in this Haus because we need people who know what it means to “have someone’s back”. You guys embody that more than anybody else.”

Ollie knew he was crying because Wicks pulled him into a side-hug and ruffled his hair, which he only did when he wanted to distract Ollie from his own emotions. Ollie laughed through the tears and pulled Holster and Ransom in for a group hug. In that moment, there wasn’t a part of him who was jealous.