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#also if u like unhinged gay manga thoughts on gunjou owo
raisinchallah · 11 months
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the recent discourse re:yuri is so curious to me. my two cents is that some of it can be attributed to the very well researched book on yuri history by erica friedman that came out a couple years back which made the seemingly legit claim that the genre started with women authors. of course the whole picture is more fraught than the viral posts i see on this paint it. and the book itself has a long section on The Bad Parts of yuri. but the quotes i see people use and word of mouth fail to mention that part. i can kind of get the defensiveness bc yuri is so often dismissed as a genre JUST for the tillitation of men in a way that really erases the quite large subculture of lesbian/bi otaku and the women writers themselves. which tbf is often the case with a lot of these subcultures (sooo much "moe" was/is written by women but was imediately dismissed as a dude thing. this kind of radicalized me as a teen.). all of that being said there WAS an interesting shift these last few years on the stories being told and how they are told (maybe because of the critical/comercial success of kabi nagata's memoirs and of series like kase-san and yagakimi? the overall evolving discourse about lgbt people on the public sphere? the uptick in openly queer women writing independent webcomics? none of these? all of these and more? shrugs). i've been reading unhinged gay manga in dynastyscans for like, a decade by now. and it's become increasingly more common for them to feature adult women, people actually saying the word "lesbian", lesbian bars even. it still surprises me constantly. comic yuri hime actually split itself in two (the idea is that the core mag is for women and the other is for men. fostering this idea of yuri by women to women). even the kirara magazine started including a lot of yuribait in its publications. which is a different beast entirely but is amusing enough that it makes me go "okay who is this FOR? yuribros? just to snatch the stray lesbian reader?". sorry for the long message i am just fascinated by all of this.
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no worries at all this is actually extremely interesting thank you so much for all these extra details yeah i have been curious about like general demographic surveys or such of major yuri magazines yeah that makes sense from a lot of my research as well erica friedman seems to be the main source of a lot of information about yuri i have also wondered in general if some of the confusion around the genre also seems to come from a lot of western bookstores manga hosting sites and so on seemingly grouping memoir and short like joke comics about lesbians and so on under the yuri label i mean im sure part of that online is cuz dynasty scans has a really wide interest in what they seek out and translate which like i love that this stuff has a wider audience but its odd to call it yuri yeah ive noticed that as well in terms of shifts in whats actually focused on i read one yuri manga that was also about broader yuri fandom i guess like about a lonely lesbian who wrote yuri doujins and so on helping another manga artist find her love for drawing again and talking about like actual stuff about being gay and so on idk very interesting the places things are going like i think thats the other funny thing about the new narrative around yuri is like as you said its often kinda surprising still when characters actually say they are lesbians cuz a lot of works kinda held onto like oh ur my exception oh this will fade etc idk fascinating stuff thank u also for the details about the states of different magazines very interesting also if u wanna discuss this more in dms :3
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