My wife and I have been catching up on Adventure Time, which is clearly a show “for boys”, but has sort of transformed along the way. It’s still clearly targeted at boys, with the main characters being a boy hero and his dog friend, but there’s more and more content to show that girls are welcome.

The boys have plenty of female friends and enemies, all of whom are perfectly happy to be who they are, and are never derided for being too feminine. At least two of their female friends are significantly more powerful/important than the main characters. Some of the messaging is pretty strongly inclusive, and certain episodes are outright feminist – my favourite is an episode in the current season (Season 3) called Memory of a Memory. The episode’s is totally a traditional “boy saves girl” plot, but… well, no spoilers.

The show has drawn fanart from some pretty strongly feminist cartoonists, like Kate Beaton and Jess Fink.

Plus, it has the catchiest little throwaway songs (mostly written by Rebecca Sugar, one of their screenwriters). We’ve been watching for about 3 weeks and I’ve pretty much had all of their 30 second songs on rotation in my head since then.

Just thought I’d mention there’s a significant brony population on the White Wolf roleplaying forums too and the Exalted sub-forum has a specific thread at the moment, with many regulars having pony related avatars: http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=51458

That particular board in 4chan is a pit of messy death unlike anywhere else on the internet, and those guys just kept at it until they won. (Readers: this is where the tag for our post “I’m gonna love and tolerate the shit outta you” comes from!) I’m always interested in feminism which connects with men in environments where they need to keep a hard-man image, and this seems to be a case of the anonymity the internet provides working FOR love and tolerance. Possibly for the first time ever.