DTWOF rule, now with more Godzilla

I noticed a cool thing other day while Moomin was making up Godzilla stories in the bathtub. It was Episode 3 of a series in which Poison Arachnid accidentally boarded a Continental Airlines flight instead of Frontier and ended up in Africa “because it’s another continent”. The other monsters built a submarine and went exploring the deep ocean searching for their friend, fighting Godzilla and some giant alien starfish along the way. The cool part was that of the ensemble of characters, so many were female, with strong personalities and varied superpowers. Mothra is a little bit naughty, and very strong, and rescues her friends a lot in between scouting and leading expeditions. On this expedition, Mothra rode in the observation deck to direct the submarine. Poison Arachnid loves to fight and tends to forget she’s poisonous. She can be very sarcastic. Godzilla herself of course is amazingly powerful. She has her family (including Baby Godzilla) under the sea…

So I was very happy to realize that my kid’s stories passed the Dykes to Watch Out for Test, also called the Bechdel test! To pass it, a story has to have two or more female characters who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man.

It’s mostly my partner Rook who has done the cultural groundwork to counteract the overwhelmingly sexist storylines from mainstream media…. by telling good stories himself, and by doing things like watching Xena episodes with Moomin — with commentary.