I mean it has been for a while but it is… god. It’s been a decade.
Apparently spotify has some party of the years thing going on and anyways, this is the top ten songs I have ever listened to.
Did you guys know this October, coincidentally enough, will mark the 10th anniversary of Yuri on Ice!!! coming out? I’m reminded by seeing this list from spotify. Look at how many times I’ve listened to that song. If I scroll to the lowest on that list? I have listened to Yuri on Ice over 41 times more than my least listened to on the list. Because that song was my sadhappyangrylostconfusedoverjoyedexcitedinlovegrievingeverythinghopeworrypeace song. It’s so many feelings wrapped into one song.
Do any of you younger people around here really understand what that anime meant to us, back then?
Do you have any understanding of how significant it was?
To have an anime with an explicitly queer cast of characters? With diverse backgrounds that weren’t just treated as a joke?
It was huge. I get people now don’t get it it’s not like the anime SHOWS them explicitly kissing but like.
The writer confirmed on SM that they did in fact kiss.
But they could only do so much with adult media censorship laws in Japan.
And it wasn’t just a big deal for anime, about the mid 2010s is really when we started to see the rise of queer characters in media PERIOD. Not that it had never happened before, but it was far from common or acceptable.
Because being BLATANTLY QUEER was considered taboo and adult just because it wasn’t cis and heteronormative.
Yuri on Ice!!! May not have been everyone’s cup of tea as a show, it wasn’t a story everyone enjoyed, but you would have been hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t shocked and awed at seeing blatantly queer characters have a story in mainstream media that was just about love. And the biggest thing is? That wasn’t even the main point. The point of the story came from a love for figure skating and the love story on top of that just complimented it.
The fist time I watched Yuri on Ice!!! I was on my (personal, my school gave us all actual laptops LOL chromebooks weren’t big yet)chrome book, late at night, on pirated streaming sites while in highschool. The first time I heard Yuri on Ice (the song) I cried. I still cry. I cry listening to history maker.
That anime is so foundational to me. I had been in fandom spaces for about 6 years at that point, but YoI came about right at a peak balance in fandom. We had a lot of the modern resources we do now, and a lot less of the censorship seeking assholes.
Do you understand, what it means, that just the illusion of a kiss was groundbreaking? Do you understand the DECADES of censorship that preceded the kiss that lead to it being so important?
As much as I love YoI do you understand how it’s also kinda sad that that was huge and amazing?
That is what censorship does.
That is what queer media being labeled as adult media does.
I was just coming around to accepting myself as being queer when I was watching this show.
I don’t think some of you understand how big all of this was.
And to be frank, by virtue of being a zillenial I am at the youngest edge of remembering the purges and being there for a couple of them like.
If I’m being totally honest I don’t just THINK some of you don’t understand, I KNOW you don’t.
Because you weren’t there. And there’s so much of old fandom and fandom history that you simply cannot truly grasp and understand without being there.
We’ve lived through both the near fall and the now recurring rise of censorship in media.
We have lived lifetimes some of you couldn’t possibly comprehend.
I have existed in fandom as long or longer than some of you have even been alive.
So if you don’t remember watching Yuri on Ice!! in real time, as it released, laughing and crying with the rest of us… if you don’t remember Ao3 pre filtering out content and the site crashes that followed. If you don’t remember problematic situations and groups surrounding Voice Actors surrounding groups like the Risembool Rangers and Mini Skirt Army (which were in good fun but HOLY parasocial activity Batman, also Vic Mignona is a creep)…
Shut up and listen when people try to explain old fandom history and censorship and its effects to you.
Frankly even if you do, the youngest of us may have been around and seen it but we weren’t in the thick of it like OUR fandom elders and it would do us well to remember that just because we were there doesn’t mean we know everything and we should listen to them sometimes too.
God. Anyways I’m on my soap box sitting in the bathroom crying… listening to Yuri on Ice while I write… maybe people are onto something when they say we may as well be back in 2016.
The fandom drama and in fighting matches up about right, too.
Maybe if you’re a young person who doesn’t get it, and you haven’t before, go watch some older popular fandom media from like the mid 2000s to early 2010s, and then Yuri on Ice!!! And maybe you will see it. Maybe you’ll begin to kinda get it.
Anyways if anyone wants a 10th anniversary watch party lmk and maybe I’ll set something up.
