Sacrilege? Or the best thing ever?
I love f/f slash shipping. See, I live with two little sisters, so it’s always “boys this and boys that”… sometimes I just wish girls would talk about other girls that way. Not just in a romantic sense, but in the sense of physical attraction too. And, well, it turns out a lot of them do, in ways that are enough to make even me blush… enter the wild realm of femslash fiction.
Femslash and Yuri
I personally got into femslash shipping pretty early on in my yuri “career”. Around the time I was getting into the genre, there were also some popular live action lez shows airing (yes, I know, the unholy 3D) like “Orange is the New Black” and “The L Word”. And while I didn’t personally watch those shows, I still earnestly followed the Tumblr posts and subreddits because my god the shipping scene. I gotta tell you, there was something very refreshing about females shipping other females, which is something I hadn’t experienced before (my only experience with female shippers had always been the overly-obnoxious fujo kind that shout at you in unrelated forums and wouldn’t even be a problem if moderators actually mod’d. BUT I DIGRESS.) What made it really fun was how openly sexual it all was.
Anyway, I can get my fix in the real world just fine, but what about yuri anime? The same kind of thing rarely seemed to apply in yuri anime, right?… oh, but it does. Just not out in the open:
Ahhhh, how I glad I am to have discovered 4chan. And I mean that seriously. I like how aggressively open a lot of the threads on /u/ are about the sexual aspect of yuri and I know there are plenty of people out there who feel the same (maybe you’re reading this right now). But of course, there’s a reason this is happening almost exclusively on 4chan; it’s not all fun and games for us lovers of all things girls’ love…
Pure Yuri Fans
A warning to Pure Yuri-only fans: I respect your taste, but I’m gonna be Oscar Frank about my qualms with you here.
Look, I love pure yuri as much as the next yuri fan. If I didn’t, I don’t see how I could have become a yuri fan to begin with. But the thing is, for me, the yuri fandom can get really stale. Not the genre itself, mind you, just the fandom; the people. It’s like I’m talking to a bunch of (lesbian-friendly) nuns and priests about yuri sometimes (nothing against Christians btw, but you get my point). If I were to muse about why this is, one observation I’d make is it looks like we’ve got this big division in the fandom: one half wants yuri to be girls who are confused about their sexuality and never do anything beyond kiss (pure yuri personnels) and the other half is cool with everything (yuri freedom fighters).
They’re holding hands, isn’t that lewd enough for you?!
Now, this wouldn’t normally bother me one bit; everyone has their own tastes, you know? The problem is that the former half seems to be very adamant about reprimanding those of us who just want to enjoy yuri differently… I guarantee if you’ve been involved in the yuri community any length of time you’ve read something to this effect, though probably not as blatant:
In case you can’t read it (it’s difficult to fit elongated pictures of text on WordPress’ narrow page), the comment reads:
“I don’t mind people being retarded. But I don’t like when they try to force sex in yuri pairings. Yuri is supposed to be cute, and to be about cute girls not being sure if they’re just really good friends or if they’re in love. These idiots assume that two girls looking at each other want to fuck each other, and it’s stupid, gross, and a complete violation of who they are.”
Whale then! Here I was thinking yuri was supposed to be about lesbians, but it seems there are supposed to be no lesbians, only confused gurlz OOF #NOHOMO.
Listen, friends, you know who the majority of the femslashers and overtly sexual lesbian fanfic writers out there are? Queer girls. It’s not like being a gay girl makes you more pure and opposed to having sex than the many straight girls who like “50 Shades of Grey” are (believe me, I’ve met the lesbians who are into the idea of “50 Shades of Grey Lesbian Edition”). But I get it, you know… a lot of yuri anime (this isn’t the case in much of live-action lesbian fiction) is often depicted as pure, so that part of the fandom sees the genre in a particular way, enjoys that aspect of romance (because it is, frankly, refreshing in this day and age) and doesn’t want to lose it.
And that’s fine!
All I’m suggesting is that we shouldn’t rain on other people’s parades. Yuri is many things, and “pure yuri” is only one of them; pure yuri also isn’t going anywhere, I pinky promise you. Live and let live, my dudes.
And hey, if you come far enough down the rabbit hole, I promise it’s fun down here too. I’ll bet you even have a secret slash pairing as well! …Oh come on, don’t be shy, I know you do. Who needs chemistry when the ladies look that sexy together? No need to be bashful about it ❤
Yuri Death Ray After Dark
To end this blog post, I’d like to touch briefly on the “Yuri Death Ray After Dark” part of this blog. I just spent some time talking about how I’m a huge fan of slash shipping and lewd yuri, right? Well, I’d like to write about some of my favorite yuri femslash pairings; how would they actually happen, how would they play out (denial -> sexual encounter -> relationship? Or something else?), who’d dominate sexually in the relationship, all that fun stuff. Essentially, it’ll be a run-down starting from episode 1 of <insert whatever series here> of how I imagine it happening.
Personally, I know I’m going to enjoy writing the After Dark posts and I think it will be really entertaining. I realize a newly-created WordPress blog is a strange place for it, but the fact of the matter is I’m only writing this blog because I haven’t seen anyone else write this blog. I want to bring a bit of that 4chan flair to the surface Internet, you know? And hey, maybe this just isn’t meant to be a Western thing in the modern age (I’ve been teaching myself Japanese for 6 months now specifically because interacting with most Westerners about ecchi and lewd yuri has been like talking to brick walls), but until I know enough Japanese to go the Land of the Rising Sun itself, this is what I’ve got!
Feel free to join me… if you dare.
JK, it’s just yuri old chap, let’s have a jolly-good time of it *friendly smack on the shoulders* See you around!
Yuri Death Ray 