ok i actually read the full Iori Miyazawa interview that “yuri of absence” comes from and i get why people screenshot that bit so much but also this whole thing is just full of Core Truths. also the follow up where is says hard sci-fi is better with girls in it because then any exposition between characters becomes a Yuri Scene. genius.
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in reply to @jkap's post:
in reply to @jkap's post:
Iori Miyazawa is one of the greatest visionaries of our time
He's the most supportive person to ever utter a horrifyingly erasing idea, imo.
(I trust him to do the right thing and I like Otherside Picnic quite a ton, but I will smack him a little if I see him in person, on pure principle.)
I see the Yuri of Absence as a reclamation of subtext myself personally, a vibe of "oh you're gonna make yuri exist only between the lines? fine. everything is yuri now. fuck you."
i also think of it as a reclamation of subtext. and concepts like 'scenery reflecting the romantic feelings of the characters' strike me as pretty standard literary use of imagery to reflect the narrative, which can be found all over yuri works like Liz and the Blue Bird.
considering that his actual writing has been anything but subtextual, i have a really hard time reading this as erasure.
(it's also worth noting that this interview is more or less Miyazawa explaining the current state of discourse among yuri authors to a room full of sci-fi authors, rather than claiming to have invented these concepts himself.)
Yeah. The concept is absolutely weird in ways I do not like; but the execution has been… well, better than most. (This is an age where you can, slowly, start to Say Gay and I am honestly a little fed up with Sorawo's enduring refusal to call what's happening anything but what she literally admits to herself is happening, even though the rest of the work is Already There in a million ways. I'm actually glad this is a plot point!)
without getting into details, i think you'll be pleased with novel 8.
So, there's an old meme that used to make the rounds, that "Yuri anime is like a photo of a bench under a beautiful tree that you can imagine two women once lovingly sat next to each other upon."
It was meant as a criticism of how subtextual and queerbaity yuri anime tend to be.
In this interview he flat out references those memes, but seems to have interpreted them as praise for how well yuri captures the true essence of yearning and nostalgia for lost connections...
And I do have to admit there is an amazing artistry to the subtextual creation of yearning and nostalgia... But I agree that it's... not great to make those the immutable foundations of the genre.
Exactly. Even if as a practice this particular author doesn't do it, there is a movement that's about 'gold-star yuri' judged solely through its tropes as a way to erase its queerness, and that's why anything in that particular direction immediately sets off alarms in my brain even when then the execution is ok.
