Dor is a 2006 Bollywood movie about female friendship saving everyone. It’s also about inter-cultural differences, redemption, forgiveness, resourcefulness, courage, and really, really pretty scenery and actors. The ending is so gorgeous it makes me cry every time.

The story follows Zeenat Fatima as she searches across India for Meera Singh, the one person who can save her husband’s life. Newly widowed Meera has a lot on her plate already, having lost the man she loved, been forced into the blue robes of a widow, and forbidden to dance or sing ever again. Independent Zeenat is everything she wants to be, and their friendship forms almost instantly. Their relationship is intense and moving, and again, that ending! Meera’s relationship with her grandmother-in-law is also pretty neat. Husbands are the mechanism of the plot, but the real story is all about women.

Also, I love Bollywood movies, but if you’re not used to them, Dor is a great entry point. While having a gorgeous soundtrack, it does not have the traditional musical numbers or dances, and remains sharply character focused.

This sounds awesome! And gorgeous! I can't wait to watch it.

ooooh, how have I not heard of this? Definitely going to check it out!

OF COURSE YOU DO.

You should watch Veep. Julia Louis Dreyfus is hilarious and does so well being kind of terrible but you root for her anyway because she's also weirdly likable. And her chief of staff is another sexy powerful woman and I ship it.

Like a lot of comedies, it takes a few episodes to find its footing, so start a few eps in, or if you're a completist, be a little patient.

Ame-Comi Girls in an alternate universe to DC. In it there is no Superman or Batman. But there is still a Supergirl and a Batgirl. The heroes and villains are all women (except for Trigon). It is fun and bright thrilled with women being badass.

Are these comics or is it a cartoon series? Or both?

Originally it was a line of statues in anime style. Then it became a comic line using the designs from the statues.

Gameindustri is a land ruled by the goddesses. The land is divided up into four countries. Lastation is ruled by Noire. Leanbox is ruled by Vert. Lowee is lead by Blanc. Say the names of the three countries out loud. Each one represents a particular video game console. I said their were four countries. The final one is Planeptune ruled by Neptune. It represents a hypothetical Sega system if they still made consoles.

The original game tells the story of the brutal Console Wars that tore Gamindustri apart. The second game is about ASIC trying to revive the deity of sin Arfoire (as in R4). The third game has Neptune being sent to the Ultradimension in the 80s were Lowee is the only country and Tari (Atari) is just a distant legend. There is also an anime series that uses elements of all three.

All the playable characters are ladies that either represent a video game system or a company that makes video games. They are also all female. There are rules, adventurers, nurses, special operatives, entertainers and they are all ladies. Yes, there is some fanservice in this series, but it never gets overwhelming.

The games never lose their humor and they don't take themselves too seriously. The characters are very aware that they are video game characters in a game about video games. It is full of references to various games, anime and some more unusual ones, such as when Neptune mistakes Tekken for being "Taken" as in the movie.

http://youtu.be/5h90qEiRSMg?t=1m10s

Love your femslash canonical, mixed with action, drama, and steampunk and set in a world half-populated by canonically FTM characters?

Love your feels with no holds barred?

Then you'll love Simoun.



The first hook is the world-building. All characters in this world are born female; half of them choose to become men at age 17, while half become adult women. This is the story of twelve young priestesses who haven't chosen yet, and the decisions they make in the midst of a war that takes their most sacred acts and turns them into violence.

The first hook is the world-building. But the characters will keep you coming back.

This is the story of Neviril, a leader broken by grief, and Paraietta, who wants to be her knight in shining armor but doesn't know how. It's about Kaim and Alty, sisters estranged from each other because of something that happened before the story begins. There's Rodore, the shy little lady, and Mamiina, the hothead who resents her. And speaking of hotheads, we have Aaeru, who refuses to believe there's anything she can't do (she's wrong, but only sometimes). Floe is the resident flirt, going through life blithely oblivious to the real problems around her. She antagonizes Limone, the pre-pubescent genius who hides behind a watchful front - at least, until she meets Dominuura, a woman whose life calling seems to be manipulating others (and doing it with style). There's Morinas, who doesn't believe that artificial boundaries should stand between her and what she wants. And finally my favorite, Yun, who hates war and whose fondest wish is to become the catcher in the rye.

And that's just the main cast. There are literally dozens of characters, the vast majority of them women, and all the male characters have female voice actors. But that's only the setup for awesome; the payoff is in the character-driven storyline and the feeeeels.

Fuckyeahfemslash - Ohana (favorite fanart) - Fanlore - Wikipedia

Simoun is an amazing series. (And the English DVDs are available rather cheaply, and not-so-legal streams are out there somewhere.)

It also has some very pretty art.

The character art, yes! I know some people look sideways at Studio Deen, but the character designs were fabulous and really fleshed out the diverse cast. (And the Rodore/Mamiina visual mirroring, how fabulous was that? <3)

The animation did have some iffy moments, but overall it looked good. The character designer sure had a thing for unique hair color, but it's fantasy, so no need to be limited by realistic hair.

And I forgot to link my favorite piece of Simoun art, so here it is!

Ah, the wings pic! I love that one.

I think the unique hair color thing is probably related to the size of the cast? If you look at similarly-sized casts in unrealistic scenarios, you get similar color choices, such as in IdolM@ster or Fairy Tail or any of the popular shounen series. Especially when something starts as a game or anime and not as a manga, the hair color becomes especially diverse, I think. It might have to do with helping the audience distinguish characters early on?

There are a lot of tropes connected to hair colors in anime, like blonde = preppy, pink = innocent, blue = reserved (and sometimes serious), black = super serious, and so on, but honestly, I think it's mostly because weird hair colors are just more fun to draw, and with larger casts, it really does help me keep the characters straight, especially in something like Simoun.

Oh, this sounds really interesting. How is the English dub?

Unfortunately there's no English dub (and I would've loved to see how one would've turned out, considering the all-female voices thing), but the Japanese cast is really good, so it's not too much of a loss.

There isn't one. I assume they took one look at the all-star, all-female cast and figured they couldn't put that together in the U.S. for the kind of budget they were aiming for. ^_^ The pro-release is sub-only, but it's about $15 for all 26 eps at Best Buy's site (positive side effect of the anime bust?).

I recommend learning a little about the world before watching, because the pro-sub didn't do as good a job as Simoun-Fans' fansub at explaining the world setup in the first couple of episodes. A quick skim of the Wikipedia world set-up page should be plenty.

I hope you get a chance to watch Simoun, whether during this exchange or later! It has remained one of my very favorite series since it aired 7 years ago.

TIERRA DE LOBOS is a Spanish historical drama set in Spain's wild west in the late 19th century. The most important thing you need to know about this show – and the reason it’s known at all outside the Spanish-language media scene – is that in its second season, it features a canon lesbian romance between one of the primary ensemble characters, Isabel Lobo, and Cristina, who had appeared as a somewhat significant recurring character previously.

Isabel is the second daughter of the wealthy landowner who runs the town, who has always been something of a tomboy especially when compared to her sisters, and Cristina is the most highly sought after prostitute in the town brothel. Their romance starts off unexpected and quickly becomes passionate, sweet, dramatic, tense, and oh my god so fucking hot, I mean, have you seen them?



To just see Cristina and Isabel's storyline, watch this video playlist with English subtitles. If you're interested in the whole show (which is fantastic and has plenty of other awesome slashy ladies), you can find versions with both Spanish and English subs at Les Cougar's Tierra de Lobas page - or if you're a fluent Spanish speaker, just stream them online at Telecinco's official site.

I've also made a longer fandom primer here for anyone interested in whole show. TIERRA DE LOBOS ♥

Ooooh, this looks awesome! I don't think I have the time or attention span to watch it even by Yuletide this year, but I'm putting it on a list for future watching!

This sounds awesome. I'm definitely going to check it out.

Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (Oreimo)

Oreimo is about a high school student named Kyousuke Kousaka who finds out that his high-achieving little sister Kirino is a closet otaku who loves playing eroge, and how it begins to mend their fraught relationship. There are a lot of wonderful female characters in this series who all have great personalities and interactions, many of which are very femslashy! The series is also very funny and sweet and has a great message that everyone is weird in their own way and that's okay. The series is available to watch for free on Crunchyroll, except for the last 4 episodes of season 1.

Here's a little bit more about the pairings I nominated:


Kirino and Ayase
Ayase is Kirino's best friend, who works with Kirino and also goes to her school. They're fashion models - see what I said above about Kirino being an overachiever? Ayase is freaked out by Kirino's otaku interests and finds eroge disgusting, so she struggles constantly to accept her friend. Ayase's appreciation for Kirino sometimes seems to go beyond the bounds of friendship: in one episode, Kirino has been playing a game where the girl that the player dates has a suspicious resemblance to Ayase, and Ayase's reaction is to excitedly ask Kyousuke if it means Kirino wants her and Ayase to be lovers. Their mutual friend Kanako also teases them about being gay for each other. Maybe she sees something there?


Kirino and Kuroneko
One of the things Kyousuke does when he finds out that Kirino is an otaku is to encourage her to find otaku friends. She joins a forum for girls who like anime and attends a meetup, which is where she meets forum mod Saori and a girl who goes by "Kuroneko" ("black cat" - she's a bit of a goth). Kirino and Kuroneko develop an antagonistic friendship - they can't agree on anything and are constantly fighting - but despite everything care about each other very much.


Kuroneko and Sena
In the last few episodes of season 1, Kuroneko joins a game development club but discovers to her dismay that the club is almost all male. However there is one other girl in the club - Sena Akagi, the best programmer in the group…and the ultimate yaoi fangirl. Sena is one of the show's funniest characters and has a permanent pair of slash goggles, to the point where she says she can ship pairings of two random objects. Kuroneko and Sena get assigned to work on a game together, and though they argue about everything from the game plot to the gameplay mechanic, they end up becoming friends and their friendship is very sweet.

Edited 2013-09-22 02:44 pm (UTC)

Because I'm too lazy at the moment to do the coding for all the images I'd want to include here, I posted a pimp for Eastwick at my Tumblr instead:

http://stillazarafteralltheseyears.tumblr.com/post/61999329279/why-femslash-fans-should-watch-and-love-eastwick

It's...probably more enthusiastic than articulate but I hope it intrigues a few people anyway. *g*

Edited 2013-09-22 09:38 pm (UTC)

I apologize for posting so many different pitches, but apparently I want femslash for totally rare things? So I thought I'd take the opportunity to pimp CDI too!



CHAK DE! INDIA is a Hindi fictional movie about the Indian women's national field hockey team (partially based on the actual 2002 Indian team). It's a pretty classic sports drama where a ragtag group comes together and overcomes their own personal differences to become an underdog team, but it's a fantastic and entertaining version of that genre. It also addresses a number of different interseting themes and issues - unsurprisingly the team faces discrimination and derision based on gender, but there are also storylines about racism and bigotry, religious issues, and more.

And, did I mention, it's an incredibly fun and slashy movie? Almost every one of the team members is highlighted at some point, and they all have great relationships with each other - and okay, it's late where I am so I'm not describing this particularly well, but basically awesome women being kickass and gorgeous and also vulnerable, and doing it together.

For better and more coherent pitches, you should watch some of the awesome vids that people have made: sol_se's Past in Present and shati's One Girl Revolution are both fantastic and cover the whole team, while Shati's other CDI vid Hadippa focuses on my favorite character, Komal Chautala (and in my mind is totally a Komal/Preeti vid, EEEEEE.)

Still looking for another fandom to ask for or offer? Enjoy seeing intelligent, beautiful female characters fighting for justice (and occasionally, for each other)? Consider taking a look at Law & Order: SVU.

The Law & Order franchise is known for being strictly ripped-from-the-headlines procedural, but SVU offers just enough glimpses into the characters' lives and relationships to let fic writers' imaginations run wild. Any number of ships can be supported by canon thanks to the magic of subtext, making it a great sandbox to play in. Come join!

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame is an awesome weird fantasy martial arts movie that features, among other things 1) spontaneous human combustion, 2) attack deer, and 3) Empress Wu Zetian having so much UST with her badass handmaiden Shangguan Jing'er that it borders on text. If you like your f/f pairings full of epic loyalty kink and embedded in complicated nasty politics where people have to choose between duty and personal ties, with a side dose of complete crackiness, this is an awesome movie!

The whole thing can be watched on YouTube, although unfortunately the official English subtitles are so weird in places as to reverse the meanings of some key scenes (I got a friend to retranslate some of the Wu and Jing'er scenes at some point):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZiu2jqa3f0

There isn't a lot of fic, but there are a few stories on AO3, mostly Wu/Jing'er, but if you don't want to be spoiled for the movie, I'd stay away from fic until you've watched it.

Content note: if you're seriously creepy-crawly phobic, this might not be the movie for you, as there are some...well, the subtitles call them beetles, I think, but they're more like millipedes (so many legs) which play a fairly major role in the plot.

Tomb Raider (2013). Lara Croft/Sam Nishimura.

Picture the scene. Two good friends, wrecked on a remote island off the Japanese coast filled with insane cultists who worship an insane goddess. One girl is kidnapped and the other spends almost the entire game trying to get her back, fighting her way through jungles, wolves, hordes of men with grenades and assault rifles.

Here is some actual footage:



FORREAL YOU GUYS THIS IS THE FEMSLASHIEST ACTION GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED.

-modly facepalm-

I'm sorry. I posted the wrong link! Would you mind re-posting this to the 2014 list?

Haha I should really read dates on things and not blindly click your links ;) No worries.

Of course the wrong link is the one getting reblogged all over tumblr.

-sighs-

Oh well. I think I'll lock comments here and put a note on the bottom.