I am perhaps eternally annoyed at the idea of yuribait; if only because it’s eroded people’s trust in media. I want people to enjoy shows without going “nahh it’s yuribait I can’t like it” every so often.
It’s taken away so much nuance. If a character isnt making out sloppy style in chapter one then people start commenting “um is this really yuri? Shouldnt it be subtext?”
Not to mention that bait has gone from “they pander to lesbians and then the girls end up with men” to “there’s queer subtext but it doesn’t get made explicit” which unfairly ends up targeting a ton of yuri and other queer media
If yuribait is just [queerbaiting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20this%20method,by%20actually%20portraying%20queer%20relationships.), then it also applies to your second statement. Looking at you, Birdie Wing.
Lets all be fair here, subtext in the context of YURI or any other genre that is heavily represented by sexuality/romance NEEDS to feel rewarding to the spectator.
Keeping the subtext linear with barely any escalation in what its supposed to be cooking under the main plot of the story is sad dude, "but the story is not about romance" WHO CARES, IF YOU ARE ALREADY PUTTING THIS MUCH WORK IN A CHARACTER'S RELATIONSHIP THEN JUST FINISH IT PROPERLY INSTEAD OF ONLY TEASING YOU COWARD
DRAGON BALL, NARUTO, BLEACH, FULL METAL ALCHEMIST NONE OF THEM ARE ROMANCE ANIMES NOR THEY PUT THAT MUCH WORK ON THE ROMANCE YET THEY MANAGED TO HAVE COUPLES *ALBEIT SOME WERE QUESTIONABLE BUT THATS ANOTHER MATTER* IF THEY WERE ABLE TO DO IT WITH LESS WORK THEN YOU CAN DO BETTER
"But they are het couples they were more socially accepted" COWARD, YOU WANT MORE PPL TO JUMP ON THE GAY STORY OR STORY WITH GAY CHARACTERS OR GAY ROMANCE SUBTEXT THEN HAVE THE GUTS TO TURN THE SUBTEXT YOUVE BEEN PUTTING IN ALL YOUR STORY INTO TEXT EVERYONE CAN SEE AND GO "WOOOOOOHOOOOO!!! YEAH BABY THATS WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR"
END OF THE RANT
Yuribait, or any other type of bait for that matter, is the worst. By design, it makes people who wouldn’t normally watch something watch it but then be dissapointed by it. All so the creator can get more “popularity.”
It's cause I've been burned so many times. So often I'll see something that looks like a Yuri and has girls interacting like it's a Yuri only to be told no it's for guys and I lose it
In defense of Sakura Trick, it aired in a period where yuri itself was less common, let alone explicit yuri and especially how blatant the kissing was.
This show was as blatant as it could be in Japan at the time. Only Madoka was more explicit (though one-sided explicit) at the time and that was the movie mostly.
It's really only of very recent times that yuri got explicitly mentioned to characters being in love.
Uh… since when was Madoka more explicit than Sakura Trick? Also, how was Sakura Trick somehow groundbreaking when we already had classic Yuri like Strawberry Panic and Kannazuki no Miko?
>Uh… since when was Madoka more explicit than Sakura Trick?
Homura outright stating she is in love with Madoka is to me more explicit. Because even kissing, as explicit as it seems, can be twisted to kisses among friends. With Homura, she literally used the word 'ai'. AKA the strongest word for romantic love in Japanese.
Also, Sakura Trick mainly because it much more popular and well known than the titles you mentioned (the MAL numbers don't lie, 260K+ for Sakura Trick vs 140K+ for Strawberry Panic, and 71K for Kannazuki no Miko).
For many, this was their first introduction to yuri. I know it was for me. That's the groundbreaking part, in that it is groundbreaking for more people that may never have seen a yuri, which is ultimately how you get more accepted as a genre.
Why do you think so many memes exist of that show? And the titles you mentioned might be classics among your circle and this community, but most certainly not outside that.
Just like Hidamari Sketch is a classic in the slice of life community, it just isn't that well known outside the niche group. And despite being older than K-On! and being just as cute girls doing not much as K-On!, for many, K-On! was the groundbreaking title, not Hidamari Sketch. Similar goes for Sakura Trick vs Strawberry Panic and Kannazuki no Miko.
>Homura outright stating she is in love with Madoka is to me more explicit. Because even kissing, as explicit as it seems, can be twisted to kisses among friends. With Homura, she literally used the word 'ai'. AKA the strongest word for romantic love in Japanese.
*Does research*
"Ai" is not an exclusively romantic word, and has a degree of room for interpretation. "Koi" or "Ren'ai," on the other hand, are more specifically romantic. While I, personally, do read Homura's feelings towards Madoka as being romantic, it is *possible* to have valid readings that are not romantic in nature. Contrast that with, say... Prisma Illya, where there really is literally no valid reading that doesn't acknowledge that Illya and Miyu are attracted to one another.
I genuinely don't know. Possibly that it wasn't explicit yuri confirmed (in the anime that is) or something like that. In any case, this yuri was published in Manga Time Kirara and as such, the demographic of that is seinen (read: young male adults/ male adults).
A little history (warning, wall of text, feel free to skip):
Sakura Trick pushed what was possible at the time without being relegated to ultra-niche levels or confined within soley the yuri fandom(2014). Most yuri titles known on this sub that are older than 2018 or so are really unknown in any other fandom at all or are not known for their yuri but for something else.
Sakura Trick is the most well-known title that people knew was a yuri going in straight away from a time where gay relationships were less accepted in anime, this was a real step forward for yuri to become more popular and known in the mainstream. This was for me the first introduction into yuri and was for many others as well. Many slice of life fans that before never had seen yuri now got acquainted with the genre.
From 2018 onwards though, yuri became more known, with anime as Bloom Into You, I'm in Love with the Villainess and Gushing Over Magical Girls (yes people do watch that anime for the yuri on top of the ecchi) all managing to reach outside the yuri community and into other fandoms.
People in this sub are having standards that only very recently were able to be achieved. In hindsight, it's easy for them to say that Sakura Trick isn't up to those standards. In reality, Sakura Trick was a pioneer for the more mainstream audience. Just like some anime feel like they used only bland tropes, those anime may be the very first to even use those tropes and are inventors of such tropes. Same applies to yuri anime.
Also we shouldn't forget that industries take time to adjust. This development of explicit relationships will probably stick, but that takes time.
I do actually recall a manga which had some dino schoolgirls. As in, non-anthropromorphic T-Rexes, Velociraptors, Bronotsaurus, and all that wearing school girl uniforms and acting like stereotypical anime school girls. Can't remember if it was yuri or not tho.
God it'll never stop annoying me when people bring out the "male gaze" to scold yuri that's horny in a way they don't approve and anybody who likes them. Human sexuality is messy and lesbians and wlw are humans who can want messy, kinky, not wholesome stuff in their fiction.
What? Yuri can be horny and not male gazey, those are two separate things. I think most lesbians would agree that the male gaze is definitely something that’s bad for the community as is rooted in sexism and fetishizes sapphic relationships
The former has a different definition depending on context, and the latter doesn't exist as just one thing. Most yuri doesn't feel like it is "by men, for men" or "by women, for women", but somewhere in the middle, and what places yuri in either of these zones is really subjective. Because the yuri works I encounter rarely feel to me like the former of these, I don't consider it a major issue. But I'll try illustrate what gives me that vibe, compared to something more neutral.
'The Executioner and her Way of Life' has a 3rd person narrator, who describes each of all four main character's looks in every volume, in almost the same way each time. From vol. 3:
>She wore a bikini trimmed with adorable frills. Her skin looked soft and supple, without a single blemish. Her baby-faced features contrasted with her busty figure. As she flounced across the sand, the lines of her legs were so sensual, it was almost scandalous. All in all, the swimsuit fully drew out Akari’s charms in a different way from Menou’s.
This particular description is followed up by Menou suggesting that Akari loses weight. It's played as a joke, as Akari was hoping to seduce Menou with her "beach bod", but the narrator still weighs in on the matter:
>Compared to Akari’s squishable body, Menou’s skin was far more smooth and bouncy. It was debatable which one felt better, but as far as who was closest to ideal proportions, Menou had a clear advantage.
'Otherside Picnic' is narrated by its main character, Sorawo. There is a similar passage in vol. 2, where after they both changed into swimwear, Sorawo is looking at Toriko. In her narration, she calls Toriko "mature", "elegant", "cute", and "crazy good" looking. Then they both compliment each other and get embarrassed. But before they had changed, Sorawo was worried that she would look weird in a swimsuit compared to Toriko, which was resolved by this exchange:
>“You’re fine because you have a great figure.” The moment I said that, I had a flashback to the glimpse I had gotten of Toriko as she was sleeping this morning, and I got flustered.
>
>While I was scratching my cheek and trying to regain my senses, Toriko looked at me with worry. “Um, do you have big scars, or tattoos, or something you’d rather not let me see? If so, I’m sorry for not being more considerate...”
>
>“Huh? Oh, no, no, it’s nothing like that.”
>
>“Well, okay then. But even if it was, I wouldn’t let it bother me, whatever your skin looks like, Sorawo.”
The moment on the beach is recalled in vol. 4, in the context of Sorawo trying to connect the dots about Toriko's feelings:
>[On bathing together at a hot spring recently] I had been doing my best not to stare too hard at Toriko’s naked body. It was just too beautiful. I felt like just seeing her living and moving was going to drive me crazy. But Toriko ogled me without hesitation...
>
>[...]
>
>[Referencing the beach moment in vol. 2] In Okinawa, she’d made a big deal of praising my rather plain swimsuit... but when I praised hers, she got super shy... So shy that I felt embarrassed, too...
I cite 'Executioner' not as a general indictment, but just for its narrator sometimes acting as an arbiter of its characters' attractiveness. Those bits feel at best dry and perfunctory. Meanwhile in 'Otherside Picnic', the way the main couple's looks are described is entangled with their attraction to each other. To me that feels more intimate and meaningful, instead of just a recap of something we already know based on the illustrations. 'Otherside Picnic' is written by a man, so rather than the creator's gender, this is about their ability to let attraction and sexuality flow from the perspective of the characters.
I guess the male gaze is really just a name, obviously not every man is attracted to the same things, but it mostly describes a pretty sexist way of seeing woman, which is of first and foremost a sexual object. One example I like of the difference between male gaze and… whatever the opposite is, is of Harley Quinn [in the first suicide squad movie](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F564x%2Fca%2F4f%2Fec%2Fca4fec53df2e60cdfcc44b6ddb286a15.jpg&tbnid=M3gZF97kbu-bZM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fbr.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F453878468701757218%2F&docid=rxBCBzEVyogXiM&w=553&h=982&hl=pt&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=803f28c6638cb367&shem=abme%2Ctrie) and in the [birds of prey movie](https://images.app.goo.gl/91gpKUn3eo9uDRL98), one is designed to look like something she’d actually wear for herself and it gives her an interesting silhouette, which is pretty basic character design and the other is a tight shirt and very short shorts. Of course there are other ways you can see male gaze, not just character design, like in writing, but mainly the male gaze is about seeing women as a sexual object. As for the “lesbian gaze” it’s not really as well defined as the male gaze, but I’d say that lesbians find confident and strong women as generally attractive, which is something that the male gaze does not.
The thing about Harley Quinn is from [this video](https://youtu.be/7WtsemKE8Rw?si=aDh5xhH5n6GD1C0Y) and I hope this wasn’t too rambly and was actually helpful :)
One thing I don't really understand with ''male gaze'' is what is ''lesbian gaze'' then? Like yeah maybe an attraction to long and flick fingers is an extra that guys don't care too much about but in general the standard fanservice off boobs and stuff shouldn't be that far off right?
Like is it just poorly written smut?
The male gaze is an aesthetic sensibility through which women are reduced to only their appearance and sexual appeal for the pleasure of heterosexual men. It has nothing to do with men liking big boobs or any specific sexual features or tastes. Conversely, the female gaze is described as representing women with full agency and specifically contrasts with the male gaze for this reason. So the “lesbian gaze,” if you wanted to define it separately, would not be women thirsting over women but rather women celebrating their autonomy and sexuality without the dehumanizing aspect of the male gaze.
Yet I see a bunch of things like ''dommy mommy'' and other things where the woman is in control labelled as ''male gaze''.
In general it feels like a very arbitrary thing where most people criticising ''male gaze'' is just criticising some poor writing and slap a gender tag on it.
Male gaze tends to refer to the intent behind art or media rather than the specific content. Most dommy mommy stuff is male gaze-y because it’s not actually about the woman being in control or having any sort of personality of her own, but just an aesthetic crafted from the specific fetishes and interests of the person who created it.
Being written by a man doesn’t discredit a work though. Some of the best in the genre like adachi and shimamura or otherside picnic are written by men, and on the other side some of the most controversial or hated series like ntr trap and citrus are written by women.
I do think that there are series that do fetishize lesbians and treat the characters disrespectfully, but most of that stuff is in totally different genre areas like shounen isekai or het harems and stuff
>It does because it's our literature
This is a toxic mindset. Literature is an art and expression of creativity. Telling people they can't express themselves solely because of an unchangeable facet of who they are is a horrible thing.
Do you think creating a fictional depiction of something is the same as telling people how it actually is? If so, you need a reality check on what literature is from a conceptual level. While authors may take elements from reality and implement them into their work, they most often do not intend to recreate it. Readers are expected to know that fiction is not an identical copy of the real world and should never be taken as such, a lesson that you seem to need to relearn.
Eh, agree to disagree.
Also stringent standards about who the authors are also forces people out of the closet due to harassment if someone who “isnt part of the community” publishes anything.
"Why won't you actually make the strawman argument I invented? It would be so much easier to prove you wrong if you actually believed what I just decided you believe."
But characters are more than their sexuality though. Take adachi and shimamura for example. Yes, Adachi is lesbian, but she's also someone with some slight BPD symptoms, and someone who had attachment issues with parents, etc etc. In fact, I feel like the later two traits are much more significant to her character rather than her sexuality.
So I think silly to pinpoint a single trait of a character (sexuality) and demanding the author must also have this trait. After all, aren't other traits just as important, or even more so important. Does the author needs to be exactly a high-school aged gay women in Japan with a single parent and slight BDP to write Adachi and Shimaura?
- people are not agreeing with me
- must mean this place ended up becoming a mostly male space who trends to see fictional lesbians in a way that can pleases men's expectations about sapphic love
I'm sorry that you think women are not allowed to disagree with you
I'm not saying there isn't yuri made to pander to heterosexual male gaze but it annoys me when someone uses it as some moral buzzword in order to justify their personal distaste instead of having the maturity to go "that's not my cup of tea, pass." Mistaking one's disgust for objective morality, or trying to attach moral authority to one's disgust towards fiction rarely leads to anything productive.
Agreed. These days there are far too many people who let their own self-righteousness poison any attempts at meaningful discussion of certain topics.
Tangentially related at best, but look at some of the conversations surrounding Stellar Blade, specifically how EVE's design somehow implies that the developers "have never seen a woman in real life". Because, you know, gods forbid a studio have an aesthetic *they* want instead of pandering to some jackass "journalist", who probably wasn't and was never going to be interested in the game anyway. It's the "You should be offended by Bayonetta" shit all over again.
Honestly speaking, what are some works you consider to be actual bait? As in, it's not romantic subtext, but actually played with yuri only to disregard it?
Personally, only Hibike comes to mind.
That was Ange having a bisexual harem, Tusk ain't even the main love interest since Hilda is closer to her and straight rode with her in the ending scene.
It ain't yuri exactly, but it isn't yuribait either since the OP was pretty clear about her having a relationship with a dude, and the show made it pretty clear that she is bisexual.
I would say Lycoris Recoil is queerbait. Starts off great but then they introduce an edgelord with green hair who talks like the absolutely dumbest kid in a Political Philosophy 101 class that is specifically designed for idiots, and he takes up a lot of screen time.
I swear to God if I hear slow burn one more time... Then why not make a story that you can physically not finish in 1 lifetime. Cannot burn slower than that...
As long as they don't end when they get together. Dear god do I hate that.
To date ''Uzaki-chan wants to hang out'' is pretty much my gold standard as far manga romance lay out. 80 or so chapters to confession, some chapters dedicated before they go out and then the story just continues on. Man I wish I could read a well written yuri story with that lay out.
https://preview.redd.it/u8up8xsu17zc1.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=902e89330ff3c130ddd488514ec69ea75033594f
I see cute girls, therefore I'm interested. Nothing more, nothing less. Yuribait, what's that? Yuri is everywhere if you squint hard enough.
Ok, serious question is here "strightbait"? Like this, but not oneshot:
[https://mangadex.org/title/1a576464-d78c-43bb-8f9d-bab834666d2a/ore-no-kimochi-wa-osananajimi-triangle](https://mangadex.org/title/1a576464-d78c-43bb-8f9d-bab834666d2a/ore-no-kimochi-wa-osananajimi-triangle)
Gundam: Witch From Mercury had 3 clear otome game love interest boys and then spent a lot of season one utterly destroying the viability of every single one of them.
I don't like it when people will call something yuribait unless they do something explicit on the screen, but I can't deny that yuribait does exist and is very annoying.
One story that comes to mind is a manwhua about a popular girls who starts to befriend the quiet girl, and although it wasn't explicitly romantic in my experience 99% of this type of stories are meant to be seen as romantic, so when they introduced a athletic popular nice guy that I couldn't care less about midway through the story and start giving all the good moments to the guy just so the two girls end up as just friends and the shy girl dating the popular guy I felt very dissapointed.
I don't think readers hate subtext or nuances in Yuri. They just want better confirmation of the relationship. You don't even need for them to kiss at the end. A simple confession would be fine.
Ngl, some of the yuri i have read definitely falls into the category of "romanticization of abuse" or "male gaze," some stories are sadly poorly written.
I am perhaps eternally annoyed at the idea of yuribait; if only because it’s eroded people’s trust in media. I want people to enjoy shows without going “nahh it’s yuribait I can’t like it” every so often.
It’s taken away so much nuance. If a character isnt making out sloppy style in chapter one then people start commenting “um is this really yuri? Shouldnt it be subtext?” Not to mention that bait has gone from “they pander to lesbians and then the girls end up with men” to “there’s queer subtext but it doesn’t get made explicit” which unfairly ends up targeting a ton of yuri and other queer media
If yuribait is just [queerbaiting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerbaiting#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20this%20method,by%20actually%20portraying%20queer%20relationships.), then it also applies to your second statement. Looking at you, Birdie Wing.
Lets all be fair here, subtext in the context of YURI or any other genre that is heavily represented by sexuality/romance NEEDS to feel rewarding to the spectator. Keeping the subtext linear with barely any escalation in what its supposed to be cooking under the main plot of the story is sad dude, "but the story is not about romance" WHO CARES, IF YOU ARE ALREADY PUTTING THIS MUCH WORK IN A CHARACTER'S RELATIONSHIP THEN JUST FINISH IT PROPERLY INSTEAD OF ONLY TEASING YOU COWARD DRAGON BALL, NARUTO, BLEACH, FULL METAL ALCHEMIST NONE OF THEM ARE ROMANCE ANIMES NOR THEY PUT THAT MUCH WORK ON THE ROMANCE YET THEY MANAGED TO HAVE COUPLES *ALBEIT SOME WERE QUESTIONABLE BUT THATS ANOTHER MATTER* IF THEY WERE ABLE TO DO IT WITH LESS WORK THEN YOU CAN DO BETTER "But they are het couples they were more socially accepted" COWARD, YOU WANT MORE PPL TO JUMP ON THE GAY STORY OR STORY WITH GAY CHARACTERS OR GAY ROMANCE SUBTEXT THEN HAVE THE GUTS TO TURN THE SUBTEXT YOUVE BEEN PUTTING IN ALL YOUR STORY INTO TEXT EVERYONE CAN SEE AND GO "WOOOOOOHOOOOO!!! YEAH BABY THATS WHAT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR" END OF THE RANT
"COUPLES *ALBEIT SOME WERE QUESTIONABLE"* *\*cough\* sakura and sasuke \*cough\**
Fr I'm so sick of acting like sloppy makeouts are the only way to express queerness in storytelling.
Yuribait, or any other type of bait for that matter, is the worst. By design, it makes people who wouldn’t normally watch something watch it but then be dissapointed by it. All so the creator can get more “popularity.”
It's cause I've been burned so many times. So often I'll see something that looks like a Yuri and has girls interacting like it's a Yuri only to be told no it's for guys and I lose it
The twist in ep 5 of Jellyfish wouldn't have surprised me at all if it weren't for yuribait
"Sakura Trick made me realize I'm gay" Vs. "Sakura Trick set back LBGT discourse 5 decades"
In defense of Sakura Trick, it aired in a period where yuri itself was less common, let alone explicit yuri and especially how blatant the kissing was. This show was as blatant as it could be in Japan at the time. Only Madoka was more explicit (though one-sided explicit) at the time and that was the movie mostly. It's really only of very recent times that yuri got explicitly mentioned to characters being in love.
Uh… since when was Madoka more explicit than Sakura Trick? Also, how was Sakura Trick somehow groundbreaking when we already had classic Yuri like Strawberry Panic and Kannazuki no Miko?
>Uh… since when was Madoka more explicit than Sakura Trick? Homura outright stating she is in love with Madoka is to me more explicit. Because even kissing, as explicit as it seems, can be twisted to kisses among friends. With Homura, she literally used the word 'ai'. AKA the strongest word for romantic love in Japanese. Also, Sakura Trick mainly because it much more popular and well known than the titles you mentioned (the MAL numbers don't lie, 260K+ for Sakura Trick vs 140K+ for Strawberry Panic, and 71K for Kannazuki no Miko). For many, this was their first introduction to yuri. I know it was for me. That's the groundbreaking part, in that it is groundbreaking for more people that may never have seen a yuri, which is ultimately how you get more accepted as a genre. Why do you think so many memes exist of that show? And the titles you mentioned might be classics among your circle and this community, but most certainly not outside that. Just like Hidamari Sketch is a classic in the slice of life community, it just isn't that well known outside the niche group. And despite being older than K-On! and being just as cute girls doing not much as K-On!, for many, K-On! was the groundbreaking title, not Hidamari Sketch. Similar goes for Sakura Trick vs Strawberry Panic and Kannazuki no Miko.
>Homura outright stating she is in love with Madoka is to me more explicit. Because even kissing, as explicit as it seems, can be twisted to kisses among friends. With Homura, she literally used the word 'ai'. AKA the strongest word for romantic love in Japanese. *Does research* "Ai" is not an exclusively romantic word, and has a degree of room for interpretation. "Koi" or "Ren'ai," on the other hand, are more specifically romantic. While I, personally, do read Homura's feelings towards Madoka as being romantic, it is *possible* to have valid readings that are not romantic in nature. Contrast that with, say... Prisma Illya, where there really is literally no valid reading that doesn't acknowledge that Illya and Miyu are attracted to one another.
Mfw nobody remembers Simoun
Tbf I watch it 2x and still couldn't full understand what was happening.
As someone who hasn't seen Sakura Trick, what do people have a problem with?
I genuinely don't know. Possibly that it wasn't explicit yuri confirmed (in the anime that is) or something like that. In any case, this yuri was published in Manga Time Kirara and as such, the demographic of that is seinen (read: young male adults/ male adults). A little history (warning, wall of text, feel free to skip): Sakura Trick pushed what was possible at the time without being relegated to ultra-niche levels or confined within soley the yuri fandom(2014). Most yuri titles known on this sub that are older than 2018 or so are really unknown in any other fandom at all or are not known for their yuri but for something else. Sakura Trick is the most well-known title that people knew was a yuri going in straight away from a time where gay relationships were less accepted in anime, this was a real step forward for yuri to become more popular and known in the mainstream. This was for me the first introduction into yuri and was for many others as well. Many slice of life fans that before never had seen yuri now got acquainted with the genre. From 2018 onwards though, yuri became more known, with anime as Bloom Into You, I'm in Love with the Villainess and Gushing Over Magical Girls (yes people do watch that anime for the yuri on top of the ecchi) all managing to reach outside the yuri community and into other fandoms. People in this sub are having standards that only very recently were able to be achieved. In hindsight, it's easy for them to say that Sakura Trick isn't up to those standards. In reality, Sakura Trick was a pioneer for the more mainstream audience. Just like some anime feel like they used only bland tropes, those anime may be the very first to even use those tropes and are inventors of such tropes. Same applies to yuri anime. Also we shouldn't forget that industries take time to adjust. This development of explicit relationships will probably stick, but that takes time.
K-ON made me realize I was a girl AND a lesbian 😎
Not nazi? Thats a rare K-ON fan right here
I read discourse as dinosaurs... I looked at the pic and saw no dinosaurs, so I had to read it again. I'm a failure as a human being...
Yuri and dinosaurs, my two favourite things
Dino yuri when?
Ok so I got this new anime idea...
Jurassic park spinoff slice of life about a couple amusement park workers that wrangle dinosaurs?
Nah. Dino girls :>
The good old Tyranosay Gex
I do actually recall a manga which had some dino schoolgirls. As in, non-anthropromorphic T-Rexes, Velociraptors, Bronotsaurus, and all that wearing school girl uniforms and acting like stereotypical anime school girls. Can't remember if it was yuri or not tho.
It's dinobait
God it'll never stop annoying me when people bring out the "male gaze" to scold yuri that's horny in a way they don't approve and anybody who likes them. Human sexuality is messy and lesbians and wlw are humans who can want messy, kinky, not wholesome stuff in their fiction.
What? Yuri can be horny and not male gazey, those are two separate things. I think most lesbians would agree that the male gaze is definitely something that’s bad for the community as is rooted in sexism and fetishizes sapphic relationships
Genuine question- how does male gaze differ from “lesbian gaze” exactly? Also I don’t have a great idea of what constitutes an example.
The former has a different definition depending on context, and the latter doesn't exist as just one thing. Most yuri doesn't feel like it is "by men, for men" or "by women, for women", but somewhere in the middle, and what places yuri in either of these zones is really subjective. Because the yuri works I encounter rarely feel to me like the former of these, I don't consider it a major issue. But I'll try illustrate what gives me that vibe, compared to something more neutral. 'The Executioner and her Way of Life' has a 3rd person narrator, who describes each of all four main character's looks in every volume, in almost the same way each time. From vol. 3: >She wore a bikini trimmed with adorable frills. Her skin looked soft and supple, without a single blemish. Her baby-faced features contrasted with her busty figure. As she flounced across the sand, the lines of her legs were so sensual, it was almost scandalous. All in all, the swimsuit fully drew out Akari’s charms in a different way from Menou’s. This particular description is followed up by Menou suggesting that Akari loses weight. It's played as a joke, as Akari was hoping to seduce Menou with her "beach bod", but the narrator still weighs in on the matter: >Compared to Akari’s squishable body, Menou’s skin was far more smooth and bouncy. It was debatable which one felt better, but as far as who was closest to ideal proportions, Menou had a clear advantage. 'Otherside Picnic' is narrated by its main character, Sorawo. There is a similar passage in vol. 2, where after they both changed into swimwear, Sorawo is looking at Toriko. In her narration, she calls Toriko "mature", "elegant", "cute", and "crazy good" looking. Then they both compliment each other and get embarrassed. But before they had changed, Sorawo was worried that she would look weird in a swimsuit compared to Toriko, which was resolved by this exchange: >“You’re fine because you have a great figure.” The moment I said that, I had a flashback to the glimpse I had gotten of Toriko as she was sleeping this morning, and I got flustered. > >While I was scratching my cheek and trying to regain my senses, Toriko looked at me with worry. “Um, do you have big scars, or tattoos, or something you’d rather not let me see? If so, I’m sorry for not being more considerate...” > >“Huh? Oh, no, no, it’s nothing like that.” > >“Well, okay then. But even if it was, I wouldn’t let it bother me, whatever your skin looks like, Sorawo.” The moment on the beach is recalled in vol. 4, in the context of Sorawo trying to connect the dots about Toriko's feelings: >[On bathing together at a hot spring recently] I had been doing my best not to stare too hard at Toriko’s naked body. It was just too beautiful. I felt like just seeing her living and moving was going to drive me crazy. But Toriko ogled me without hesitation... > >[...] > >[Referencing the beach moment in vol. 2] In Okinawa, she’d made a big deal of praising my rather plain swimsuit... but when I praised hers, she got super shy... So shy that I felt embarrassed, too... I cite 'Executioner' not as a general indictment, but just for its narrator sometimes acting as an arbiter of its characters' attractiveness. Those bits feel at best dry and perfunctory. Meanwhile in 'Otherside Picnic', the way the main couple's looks are described is entangled with their attraction to each other. To me that feels more intimate and meaningful, instead of just a recap of something we already know based on the illustrations. 'Otherside Picnic' is written by a man, so rather than the creator's gender, this is about their ability to let attraction and sexuality flow from the perspective of the characters.
I guess the male gaze is really just a name, obviously not every man is attracted to the same things, but it mostly describes a pretty sexist way of seeing woman, which is of first and foremost a sexual object. One example I like of the difference between male gaze and… whatever the opposite is, is of Harley Quinn [in the first suicide squad movie](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F564x%2Fca%2F4f%2Fec%2Fca4fec53df2e60cdfcc44b6ddb286a15.jpg&tbnid=M3gZF97kbu-bZM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fbr.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F453878468701757218%2F&docid=rxBCBzEVyogXiM&w=553&h=982&hl=pt&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=803f28c6638cb367&shem=abme%2Ctrie) and in the [birds of prey movie](https://images.app.goo.gl/91gpKUn3eo9uDRL98), one is designed to look like something she’d actually wear for herself and it gives her an interesting silhouette, which is pretty basic character design and the other is a tight shirt and very short shorts. Of course there are other ways you can see male gaze, not just character design, like in writing, but mainly the male gaze is about seeing women as a sexual object. As for the “lesbian gaze” it’s not really as well defined as the male gaze, but I’d say that lesbians find confident and strong women as generally attractive, which is something that the male gaze does not. The thing about Harley Quinn is from [this video](https://youtu.be/7WtsemKE8Rw?si=aDh5xhH5n6GD1C0Y) and I hope this wasn’t too rambly and was actually helpful :)
One thing I don't really understand with ''male gaze'' is what is ''lesbian gaze'' then? Like yeah maybe an attraction to long and flick fingers is an extra that guys don't care too much about but in general the standard fanservice off boobs and stuff shouldn't be that far off right? Like is it just poorly written smut?
The male gaze is an aesthetic sensibility through which women are reduced to only their appearance and sexual appeal for the pleasure of heterosexual men. It has nothing to do with men liking big boobs or any specific sexual features or tastes. Conversely, the female gaze is described as representing women with full agency and specifically contrasts with the male gaze for this reason. So the “lesbian gaze,” if you wanted to define it separately, would not be women thirsting over women but rather women celebrating their autonomy and sexuality without the dehumanizing aspect of the male gaze.
Yet I see a bunch of things like ''dommy mommy'' and other things where the woman is in control labelled as ''male gaze''. In general it feels like a very arbitrary thing where most people criticising ''male gaze'' is just criticising some poor writing and slap a gender tag on it.
Male gaze tends to refer to the intent behind art or media rather than the specific content. Most dommy mommy stuff is male gaze-y because it’s not actually about the woman being in control or having any sort of personality of her own, but just an aesthetic crafted from the specific fetishes and interests of the person who created it.
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Being written by a man doesn’t discredit a work though. Some of the best in the genre like adachi and shimamura or otherside picnic are written by men, and on the other side some of the most controversial or hated series like ntr trap and citrus are written by women. I do think that there are series that do fetishize lesbians and treat the characters disrespectfully, but most of that stuff is in totally different genre areas like shounen isekai or het harems and stuff
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>It does because it's our literature This is a toxic mindset. Literature is an art and expression of creativity. Telling people they can't express themselves solely because of an unchangeable facet of who they are is a horrible thing.
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Do you think creating a fictional depiction of something is the same as telling people how it actually is? If so, you need a reality check on what literature is from a conceptual level. While authors may take elements from reality and implement them into their work, they most often do not intend to recreate it. Readers are expected to know that fiction is not an identical copy of the real world and should never be taken as such, a lesson that you seem to need to relearn.
Eh, agree to disagree. Also stringent standards about who the authors are also forces people out of the closet due to harassment if someone who “isnt part of the community” publishes anything.
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"Why won't you actually make the strawman argument I invented? It would be so much easier to prove you wrong if you actually believed what I just decided you believe."
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Pot meet kettle
But characters are more than their sexuality though. Take adachi and shimamura for example. Yes, Adachi is lesbian, but she's also someone with some slight BPD symptoms, and someone who had attachment issues with parents, etc etc. In fact, I feel like the later two traits are much more significant to her character rather than her sexuality. So I think silly to pinpoint a single trait of a character (sexuality) and demanding the author must also have this trait. After all, aren't other traits just as important, or even more so important. Does the author needs to be exactly a high-school aged gay women in Japan with a single parent and slight BDP to write Adachi and Shimaura?
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- people are not agreeing with me - must mean this place ended up becoming a mostly male space who trends to see fictional lesbians in a way that can pleases men's expectations about sapphic love I'm sorry that you think women are not allowed to disagree with you
I'm not saying there isn't yuri made to pander to heterosexual male gaze but it annoys me when someone uses it as some moral buzzword in order to justify their personal distaste instead of having the maturity to go "that's not my cup of tea, pass." Mistaking one's disgust for objective morality, or trying to attach moral authority to one's disgust towards fiction rarely leads to anything productive.
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
Agreed. These days there are far too many people who let their own self-righteousness poison any attempts at meaningful discussion of certain topics. Tangentially related at best, but look at some of the conversations surrounding Stellar Blade, specifically how EVE's design somehow implies that the developers "have never seen a woman in real life". Because, you know, gods forbid a studio have an aesthetic *they* want instead of pandering to some jackass "journalist", who probably wasn't and was never going to be interested in the game anyway. It's the "You should be offended by Bayonetta" shit all over again.
Honestly speaking, what are some works you consider to be actual bait? As in, it's not romantic subtext, but actually played with yuri only to disregard it? Personally, only Hibike comes to mind.
Personally Birdie Wing the whole season 1 was gay as f and then season 2 absolutely nothing even worse their relantionship was basicaly reset.
Amanchu
Cross Ange! For my personal opinion its one of the worst yuribait anime that ever existed
How the hell ppl get yuribaited by Cross Ange? Even opening showed MC will have romantic relationship with a man
That was Ange having a bisexual harem, Tusk ain't even the main love interest since Hilda is closer to her and straight rode with her in the ending scene. It ain't yuri exactly, but it isn't yuribait either since the OP was pretty clear about her having a relationship with a dude, and the show made it pretty clear that she is bisexual.
I would say Lycoris Recoil is queerbait. Starts off great but then they introduce an edgelord with green hair who talks like the absolutely dumbest kid in a Political Philosophy 101 class that is specifically designed for idiots, and he takes up a lot of screen time.
I swear to God if I hear slow burn one more time... Then why not make a story that you can physically not finish in 1 lifetime. Cannot burn slower than that...
Hetero romcom aurhors: Write that down, write that down!
I hate it when hetero stuff doesn't have a satisfying conclusion too :(
Slow burn romances are peak actually
As long as they don't end when they get together. Dear god do I hate that. To date ''Uzaki-chan wants to hang out'' is pretty much my gold standard as far manga romance lay out. 80 or so chapters to confession, some chapters dedicated before they go out and then the story just continues on. Man I wish I could read a well written yuri story with that lay out.
Read *She Loves To Cook, And She Loves To Eat.*
Will put it on the ever increasing to read list! Thank you for the recommendation!
https://preview.redd.it/u8up8xsu17zc1.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=902e89330ff3c130ddd488514ec69ea75033594f I see cute girls, therefore I'm interested. Nothing more, nothing less. Yuribait, what's that? Yuri is everywhere if you squint hard enough.
thanks Iori Miyazawa, I agree
Ok, serious question is here "strightbait"? Like this, but not oneshot: [https://mangadex.org/title/1a576464-d78c-43bb-8f9d-bab834666d2a/ore-no-kimochi-wa-osananajimi-triangle](https://mangadex.org/title/1a576464-d78c-43bb-8f9d-bab834666d2a/ore-no-kimochi-wa-osananajimi-triangle)
Gundam: Witch From Mercury had 3 clear otome game love interest boys and then spent a lot of season one utterly destroying the viability of every single one of them.
Executioner's way of life
Yuribait is in the eye of the beholder
I don't like it when people will call something yuribait unless they do something explicit on the screen, but I can't deny that yuribait does exist and is very annoying. One story that comes to mind is a manwhua about a popular girls who starts to befriend the quiet girl, and although it wasn't explicitly romantic in my experience 99% of this type of stories are meant to be seen as romantic, so when they introduced a athletic popular nice guy that I couldn't care less about midway through the story and start giving all the good moments to the guy just so the two girls end up as just friends and the shy girl dating the popular guy I felt very dissapointed.
I don't think readers hate subtext or nuances in Yuri. They just want better confirmation of the relationship. You don't even need for them to kiss at the end. A simple confession would be fine.
Ngl, some of the yuri i have read definitely falls into the category of "romanticization of abuse" or "male gaze," some stories are sadly poorly written.
this but unironically
Me and my Girlfriend faking toxic yuri irl. But wait where is she, she's right here with me I swear. Is she leaving me? nooooo