Yuri Liberation Now!

Don't try nothin

[yuri-warrior]

The Yuri Liberation Front Wants You!

The Mission: Demand More WLW Content

"But how do we do that, YW?"

I'm glad you asked. There are two great ways you can effect change to increase the presence of WLW fiction.

Create WLW fiction. Any story submitted to the public is a win. Original stories and fanworks alike show a creative interest in WLW fiction as well as creating more room for discussion.

Discuss WLW fiction. In person can introduce those in your life to yuri, and can also be a great way to get recommendations that would not otherwise come across your dashboard. Online discussion is a great way to discuss the finer points of a work with other fans. This discourse (I use "discourse" in the academic sense, not with negative connotations) persists in posts that allow others to catch up on the conversation.

"But isn't it too late to say something meaningful about Yuri? Hasn't the genre and elements of it existed since the '70s?"

Modern Yuri, yes, but WLW stories are as old as the human word. Regardless, the ideal Burkean Parlor model of discourse imagines a discussion which is always ongoing in which participants may drop into and out of the conversation. The conversation outlives its participants so long as new ones continue to join.

"Okay but what are you doing to help?"

I'm studying queer fiction and marginalized women throughout the ages. I am also a writer. And I do other lesbian things.

[yuri-warrior]

Currently consuming for Yuri:

▶ RCBG

Previous thoughts:

My thoughts here are based solely on whether I enjoyed the portrayal of WLW romance in the fictional work. This is not a moral endorsement or condemnation of a work as a whole; that's not what I'm doing here.

If I list a work italicized and with an author's name, I read it. If a story exists in multiple formats but I happened to watch rather than read it, I will neither italicize nor list the author.

I will update this list as I go. If you want my thoughts on something specific, just ask.

Loved:

♡ Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

♡ Adachi and Shimamura

♡ There and Here by Alice Brown

Liked:

◇ Frieren, Beyond Journey's End

◇ Since I Died by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

◇ The Antidote by Karen Russell

◇ The Two Offers by Frances Ellen Watkins

◇ Life is Strange

◇ Avatar: The Legend of Korra

◇ Cyberpunk: 2077

◇ The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

◇ Hollow Knight: Silksong

◇ Fionna & Cake

Neutral:

♧ Two Friends by Mary E. Wilkins

♧ My Visitation by Rose Terry

Hated:

♤ The Bostonians by Henry James

♤ The Long Arm by Mary E. Wilkins

♤ Tommy the Unsentimental by Willa Cather

♤ Stranger Things

[omtai]

Man I miss free the nipple. Its getting warmer and we don’t even have free the nipple anymore

[azuremist]

Can she be any more obvious

[yuri-warrior]

TADC movie was good. The music was a bit loud, but the movie was good.

[punkitt-is-here]

"As I look at Rashmi’s face, her expression inscrutable, I wonder if there’s any way to know if she wants the same thing, or how she’d react to any advances I make"

[furufoo-art]

If I fumbled a girl like Katherine this badly I honestly would never show my face in public again in pure shame.

I love Katherine so goddamn much omfg she deserves so much kindness. Transcript under the cut

Nichole: She's sooo annoying and clueless and inconsiderate and she talks like an insufferable anime villain ALL the time. It's like everything she does is just to aggravate me specifically. Why can't she be normal like me and not be constantly full of brainworms. She just gets on my nerves so much I can't STAND her why won't she kiss me

Arrow pointed at Katherine: Literal cutest, kindest girl alive

[yuri-warrior]

The narrative of RCBG can only be described as a pressure cooker.

I will be having more thoughts on this later, but it is already half past midnight and I have another chapter to read if I want to make any more progress toward getting caught up. Then I can actually start to dig into serious analysis.

[yuri-warrior]

Okay so now that I've caught up, I'm certain that my initial assessment was correct. I'll be continueing to work under the framework that each character in RCBG rarely gets to do what they actually want to due to the immense pressure they're under and the sheer pain they've been marinating in — hence the pressure cooker metaphor. The fact that everyone in the RCBG competition goes to the same university keeps them in constant contact with one another, even if they absent themselves from the Accord-server-panopticon.

Even if anything gets resolved, the history that every character has of hurting one another taints the progress they make. It is this kind of bullshit (that I heavily enjoy in a story) that makes the gender discoveries at the end of season 1 unable to fix these girls. It is because their discoveries come out of so much pain that neither Kathy and Nichole nor Rupali and Rashmi could reconcile, moving forward with suspicion rather than relief. As ridiculous as the fake dating arc begins, anything less than an absurd scheme is out of the question as far ask Kathy and Nichole are concerned.

Even without the uniquely ill-advised actions of Kathy and Nichole being so wrapped up in the competition server, the Tahani-Rashmi-Rupali dynamic is steeped in just as much tragedy, though their parents appear to have more agency in that history. Even as Rashmi and Rupali gain agency by acting against their parents' wishes, their difference in initial responses to Tahani's coming out created such a chasm between that trio that any reasonable reconciliation seemed impossible. Due to Tahani having been wounded by Rashmi so far before the story begins and her unwillingness to tolerate the server, Tahani seems at first to be bullshit-proof, which makes it all the more compelling when that is proven false by the writing...

Laura and Emmy seem almost tame in comparison, as their history seems to be only a few year long as opposed to the lifetime relationships of misery that everyone else has. Nevertheless, their relationship being born of years of intense competition makes it so that Emmy can only see a win-lose ending for her and Laura.

This is of course a general assessment of RCBG; I'll be going more in depth (not granular to the point of chapter-by-chapter analysis, but rather after deciding on some story arcs) with my specific goal of examining how the narrative treats wlw relationships. That said, I am overwhelmingly pleased with RCBG in that respect.

[salithemage]

rashmi getting pissed at katherine for saying she's nothing compared to rupali and then saying almost the same thing about herself to tahani a few minutes later is uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

good thing this series releases biweekly cause we'll need that time to unpack all THAT

[yellow-kudzu]

I'm going to be honest. I thought Ranked Competitive Breast Growth was real. I thought cis men were taking estrogen and growing breasts competitively for money. I've thought this for months.

Months.

Didn't question it or research it further. Just saw it pop up on my dash every so often and thought "wild, but I get it".

This is how bad the economy feels to me right now.

[yuri-warrior]

I get Emmy. I mean, I would also crash out if I lost the woman giving me orders too.

[yuri-warrior]

In updating my pinned post, I realize that I never posted about Stranger Things in yuri analysis. I think it is apparent that while Robin is a cool character with a canon lesbian love interest, her lesbianism exists for Steve to accept. Other than that, it is treated as an appeasing afterthought, and that treatment of lesbianism in media feels like an 'Oh shut up, we didn't kill her off at least.'

To be clear, I'm not hating on the ships, merely the Duffer Brothers' dogshit writing.

[yuri-warrior]

Kathy pronoun conquest let's gooooo

[yuri-warrior]

The narrative of RCBG can only be described as a pressure cooker.

I will be having more thoughts on this later, but it is already half past midnight and I have another chapter to read if I want to make any more progress toward getting caught up. Then I can actually start to dig into serious analysis.

[yuri-warrior]

One thing that I am particularly growing to love about how RCBG is written is that every throw away detail return in a glorious reflection later. Such as how Kathy and Rashmi discuss how bad a crash-into-each-other meet-cute would be irl, followed by Emmy and Mona having that exact type of meet-cute. Followed by a real kiss amidst fake-dating, another earlier trope from the romcom watching.

[yuri-warrior]

Day 2 of reading Ranked Competitive Breast Growth. Chapter 23, please do every horrible thing to my brain that the previous 22 chapters have.

[yuri-warrior]

So chapter 15 is a knife? Designed for my HEART?

[yuri-warrior]

Emmy and Laura have a beautiful and wholesome relationship.