pnictogen-wing

The Pnictogen Wing

@pnictogen-wing

  • they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)

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pnictogen-wing
@pnictogen-wing
tallestgoose
@tallestgoose
hecker
@hecker

Notes toward a unified theory of yuri

Following up on some off-the-cuff comments I made on the Okazu discord about Yuri Is My Job, here are some half-baked and incomplete thoughts trying to tie together the various strains of yuri (mainly manga, with some anime mixed in) in a semi-coherent way. My aim is not to do a TV Tropes/“database animal”-style collection of common yuri tropes, but rather to try to account for the historical evolution of yuri in its various incarnations, and relate them to the Japanese social, cultural, economic, and political contexts in which yuri works were created. (I omit discussion of yuri outside of Japan, although it’s very interesting to see how non-Japanese yuri and “GL” content is both influenced by and differs from Japanese yuri.)

Please consider this an opportunity to poke holes in my arguments and highlight important factors I totally missed. And with that, let’s get to it . . .

hecker
@hecker

Or rather, notes toward an evolutionary theory of yuri

Resharing this for folks in other time zones, and expanding on a comment I made in response to a comment from @thaliarchus:

Calling this a “unified theory of yuri” was really a tongue-in-cheek nod toward my time as a physics student. I think it's actually better thought of as an evolutionary theory of yuri.

That is, it attempts to address why particular forms of yuri arose in particular environments and became popular, how they can be grouped into larger categories (e.g., how magical girl, isekai, and SF yuri like Otherside Picnic can be considered “species” within a higher-level “genus”), and how they underwent “descent with modification” and even occasionally went extinct in response to changing environments (like S literature post WW2).

I think this can help us understand what elements are essential in the evolution of particular forms of yuri and which are “accidental,” as it were. Thus, for example, one can imagine something like S literature without Christian iconography (lilies, crosses, etc.). However I don’t think one can imagine it arising or thriving without the combination of ideals of romantic love, all-girl schools, and universal early arranged marriage.

I think this also leads to interesting questions for further research. Here are two I can think of off the top of my head, to which I have only partial or fuzzy answers:

  • What factors in past and present Japanese society account for the historical popularity of tales involving transformation, including transformations involving gender nonconformity?
  • What factors in contemporary Japanese society account for the particular forms, plots, themes, etc., of shakaijin yuri?

"Moar reseach needed!" as they say.

Goyavoyage
@Goyavoyage
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thaliarchus
@thaliarchus

My only off-the-cuff thought is that if there's a 'theory' of yuri here, rather than a chronology, it's mostly implicit—in the very act of offering a chronology, among other things.

Since it's mostly implicit I might be wholly barking up the wrong tree here, but I think I'd sum that theory up as what we might call a 'strong social model' of yuri content and theme, in which currents in Japanese society fundamentally drive what happens in yuri material and what that material thinks it is itself about.

I won't say whether or not I think this is right, but it strikes me as at least useful, because fans (and not just fans of yuri) so often default to non-social ideas of a lineage of works which might influence each other but lack ties to their different historical moments.

I hesitate over the idea of genre maturity, which doesn't map comfortably onto my sense of how such things work in some other areas, but I'm not nearly well-read enough to produce (say) S literature counterexamples that might trouble it.

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hecker
@hecker

Thanks for stopping by to comment. To be honest, I was using the term "unified theory" very much tongue in cheek, as an ex-physics major it was irresistible. As you note, it's really more a chronology, or I would argue, a description of yuri's evolution (since a "chronology" could simply be "one d----d thing after another").

You are correct in that what I was really interested in was how the themes and core plots of yuri arise out of both Japanese society and previous works, what you call a "strong social model". I set this against an account that focuses only on cataloging yuri tropes, or that focuses only on "texts" in isolation.'

And now that I think of it, if I were a biology major I would have called this "notes toward an evolutionary theory of yuri", since what it really addresses is why particular forms of yuri arose in particular environments and became popular, how they can be grouped into larger categories (e.g., how magical girl, isekai, and SF yuri like Otherside Picnic can be considered species within a higher-level genus), and how they underwent "descent with modification" and even occasionally went extinct in response to changing environments (like S literature post WW2).

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StillEnjoyingManga
@StillEnjoyingManga

MariMite wasn't inspired by S literature. Konno said in an interview with Eureka that she hadn't heard of S until after she had created her series. She was inspired by BL LNs and real life.

To me, it's wrong to use the label "class S" for series that focus on romance, such as StoPani and AnoKiss. While MariMite was very influential, what it mostly inspired was works catering to people who enjoyed the surface features but would have enjoyed it more if Yumi and Sachiko had become lovers. I'd go as far as to say there hasn't been a series after MariMite that made a genuinely soeur-like relationship its focus. The close thing to the underlying substance of such a relationship is found in A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow.

Shakaijin yuri and also queer yuri was getting made before 2010. I'm not even sure it's proportionally more common now. Love My Life started in 2000. Octave and Ohana Holoholo were among the earliest yuri manga to reach 6 volumes. Early Yuri-Hime was doing things like Conditions of Paradise and Apple Day Dream.

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hecker
@hecker

Thank you for commenting! (I learn so much from these comments.)

"Maritime wasn't inspired by S literature..." This confirms my theory that S literature went totally extinct post-war, and that the idea of same-gender relationships in a single-gender school setting was instead carried forward by BL. (But certainly S literature was rediscovered post-Marimite, e.g., we see Takako Shimura referencing Yoshiya and Hana monogatari in Aoi hana in the mid 2000s.)

"What [Marimite] mostly inspired ..." The way I would put this is that the downstream influence was really from Marimite doujinshi rather than Marimite itself.

Regarding the term "Class S", that's a label that (Western) fans seem to apply to pretty much any work that features all-girls schools and lily-style imagery. I agree that it's overused and misapplied, but I'm not sure the toothpaste can be put back in the tube.

"Shakaijin yuri and also queer yuri was getting made before 2010." I was thinking of the recent trend of seeing such works get licensed English versions. But you're absolutely correct that we see such works in the 2000s, really as far back as the 1990s (if I remember correctly).

Thanks again for stopping by!

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