Swirly313

An autistic bisexual geek

A writer and geek whose interests cycle around animation, comics, and video games.

Icon art by Stina Rudebjer

Header image from "Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!" (2020)



StillEnjoyingManga
@StillEnjoyingManga asked:

Referring to part of your review of Cocoon Entwined vol 5: what stories would you consider examples of the classic class S formula? As in, they treat class S relationships as ephemeral play acting in preparation for heterosexuality.

To be honest, this is a tricky question, because while I know of the Class S genre, and the numerous works that were directly or indirectly inspired by it, I haven’t actually read many stories that would fall under that category. This is partially because most of those works are still untranslated in English, and partially because I don’t really enjoy reading those types of stories outside of checking them out for their historical significance.

That being said, there are a couple of series yuri that have characters experience this kind of mentality of sapphic relationships being temporary. They are also criticize this mentality in their own way, much like Cocoon Entwined.

Bloom Into You by Nakatani Nio has Saeki Sayaka, one of the major characters in the series, experience this during her first romantic relationship with an upperclassman while she was in middle school. This gets covered in more detail in her spin-off light novel series.

The Moon on a Rainy Night by Kuzushiro has a secondary character describe her experience dating a classmate from an all-girls high school who wanted her to dress like a boy while going out.

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki has a more indirect example of this, as Nomoto Yuki, one of the main characters, has a nightmare about her girl friends “growing up” and falling into society’s heteronormative expectations.

Hopefully that answers your question!


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in reply to @Swirly313's post:

Thank you for answering. I can't name any examples of it either, despite being able to read Japanese. I try to keep an open mind, but I wonder if the impression that it's a formula in class S narratives can exist as an idea that's passed around without being examined.

Even with an old class S story like Sakura Namiki (by Macoto Takahashi, from 1957), perhaps the sentiment that the relationship is preparation for heterosexuality was part of the cultural context it would have been read in, but that isn't apparent in the story itself.

You're very welcome. I think you're right that this heteronormative part of Class S narratives is primarily presented as subtext, rather than something that is explicitly stated.

It may also help to consider that most of the examples in the genre, like Yoshiya Nobuko's novels, were written and published in the early 20th Century, when it would have been significantly more difficult, but not impossible, for sapphic women and girls to pursue romantic relationships. But, again, this is based on what literary scholars and researchers have said about the genre, rather than something I have directly read for myself.

Rather than being presented in subtext, I mean more that people bring their ideas about the context and it affects how they interpret a story. Even if a story were written from the perspective that S relationships are genuine and worthwhile in and of themselves, a reader can still interpret them as play-acting. Either because the reader themselves carries the belief that adolescent girls being attracted to a girl can be explained as a phase, or because they have heard about that belief and therefore primed to expect to find it in stories.

I've read some Yoshiya's stories and those didn't treat the close female relationships as play-acting in preparation for marriage. There's a few stories in Hana Monogatari where characters flee marriage or choose death to avoid it.

My apologies, I assumed you were discussing subtext rather than reader interpretation, thank you for the clarification.

And you're right, reader interpretation is a huge component in reading any queer, or queer-adjacent, text since a lot of cishet people will bend over backwards to erase and re-write queerness in fiction, whether it is in classic or contemporary narratives.

i do want to note that while "class S stories that expect the heroines to enter into a heterosexual marriage" might be a rare breed, modern yuri that talks about the characters being expected to leave lesbianism in high school is everywhere - from Saeko in HDWR to the protagonists of Pinky Candy Kiss to the arranged marriages in Sweet Blue Flowers to the examples already mentioned above. Clearly this stereotype is alive and well within Japan, even if we can't find it outright in S literature.

Yep, this is very true! I think this belief that queerness is just a "phase" that people "grow out of" is not exclusive to Class S or yuri, but sadly something a lot of queerphobic people genuinely believe. It is nice to see that we're getting more series that challenge heteronormative expectations in society and creating narratives where sapphic women can be happy together.

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