#YURI!! THEY'RE LESBIANS!! BOTH OF THEM!!!

[thecultoflove]

𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘐'𝘮 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱 𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦..

[meganechan05]

"You do know we have chairs in the warehouse, right?"

"Is your lap not one?"

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Propaganda:

For Bingqiu: "One is a housewife and the other is a trophy wife. They both want to be each other's wife so bad (even though Shen Qingqiu would never admit it)"

"Where do I even start... Housewife x trophy wife. Every gender havers. Shen Qingqiu can't decide if he himself is wife or mommy, but is convinced his husband is a delicate lovesick maiden. Luo Binghe has self-assigned himself all of the wifely duties of an ancient Chinese wife years before Shen Qingqiu has become remotely aware of his crush. Also later in the novel he acts like a jealous girlfriend. And specifically girlfriend, like it was an important part of his arc that he stopped acting like a jealous boyfriend and started acting like a jealous girlfriend instead. This has won him his man."

"They're insane, fucking unhinged"

For Vashwood: "themes... *coughs blood* motifs... *dies*"

"Doomed romance, is there anything more yuri than that?"

"the trigun fandom has been calling a specific few chapters of the manga "hospital yuri", i think because while they were in that hospital vash and wolfwood had massive lesbians energy XD"

"So Much gender, Vash is somehow both cis and a trans man and a trans woman all at the same time. they both keep sacrificing themselves for the other which is inherently yuri. they're fighting against the narrative imposed on them by people who want to see them fail, that's yuri too. they even had many heart-to-heart discussions about life and death and defending oneself and the necessity of violence and protecting other people and forgiving oneself or the other. yuri."

[grenade-maid]

there's a lot of reasons more people aren't into yuri that are troubling to consider, but equally, I genuinely think it cannot be understated how much of it comes down to most yuri being boring as hell. Like truly. I've been reading the front page of Dynasty Scans like it was the newspaper for 15 years I am not exaggerating I can show you the download file data 15 years.

You know what the complaint about yuri by yuri readers was back in 2009?

"wow that really was just 5 volumes of them blushing at each other and then they don't even kiss"

You know what the complaint about yuri by yuri readers is today in 2023?

"wow that really was just 5 volumes of them blushing at each other and then they don't even kiss"

Don't get me wrong, Yuri has grown a LOT in that time, to the point that most people today wouldn't even understand a Maria-sama reference if it were dropped in front of them (thank God). It's expanded and evolved to encompass more stories about adult women, wider varieties of scenarios, a greater acknowledgement of real life lesbianism, and is more comfortable showing girls kissing with tongue and having sex.

Yuri Manga is maybe the best is it's ever been, and it's also getting the widest readership it's ever had in the English speaking world. The titles we carry at work are always on back order with long queues, and, when I've asked them, most weebs of all gender or sexualities report keeping up with at least a few Yuri series.

At large though? Most of it is still really boring. That's not a bad thing necessarily. I like it because it goes down easy. For the most part any series you pick is gonna be pretty chill. Even shit from Sal Jiang which is PRETTY EDGY for yuri is a pretty breezy read. More serious ones like How Do We Relationship? cover some pretty real subjects about how intimacy is actually quite difficult even when both of you love each other, but it's not like... Exciting. Yuri isn't where you go to pump your fist or get perched on the edge of your seat.

So when the comparison is made to yaoi, well, I mean, have you READ any yaoi? Even in some of the more restrained titles those boys are likely to be sucking and fucking balls and all within the first volume or two. There's gonna be drama, intrigue, shit is gonna get messy, passions are gonna get heated, clothes are gonna be ripped off, people are gonna get sold to One Direction, it's stuff you can sit down with a bowl of popcorn with you know? Stuff you can message your friend and gush Hey Can You BELIEVE? A lot of it is pretty trashy, but that's the appeal. The generic state of yaoi is torrid and exciting and sexy. Ultimately, as a species many of us like to see pretty people fuck. In yaoi you'll get that. In yuri you won't. Nothing wrong with that, but it is gonna be a major contributing factor to their relative popularity.

It's also worth making the comparison to hetero romance manga, which has undergone a renaissance of it's own in recent years. There's now a whole meta around crafting a handful of mean shitty grouchy dysfunctional bully women and flinging them at the protagonist of the day who, unlike in years past, may actually have a face and personality. Most of these are also very trashy and truly scrape the bottom of the bucket in terms of writing.

AND YET?

I would bet money on the fact that you'll have heard of these women and probably even have a good idea what they're like without ever having touched a page of their manga.

I'm sorry but the straights are whipping donuts around the yuri girls in terms of delivering a wide variety of weird compelling fucked up women. How many yuri leading ladies by comparison can you point to as standout recognizable characters even divorced from their story? There's definitely a few, but not many. I'm not talking quality or depth of writing, I'm talking straight up pure recognizability. There are many beautifully written women in yuri, now more than ever. I can't think of many who'd like, get a figure made or have their face splashed on merch, though.

I don't really have a conclusion here. I love Yuri a lot, but at the end of the day this is just kinda the state of things right now.

[chireikiden]

Might be a pretty basic take by the standards of more seasoned yuri fans, but it's my perspective as someone who's mostly read yuri in a Touhou context (though a lot of it), and exclusively manga from the Japanese fans as opposed to i.e. written fics.

Touhou yuri (using it very broadly here to describe any kind of wlw shipping present) is, across the board, in a pool of fan literature going back twenty years, remarkably good at taking the lesbian part for granted. Not counting outright het content or works that simply don't bring it up, I have only very vague memories of a character's lesbian orientation being either denied or even brought to question (even in the cliche "But we're both girls!" manner, which even as a somewhat dead horse trope you might still expect to see, given plenty of doujin writing isn't exactly highbrow). You might be able to read "Does she like girls?" between the lines in the usual question of "Does she like me?" if you really want to, but the way it's still basically treated as default is fun to me. There's a reason Touhou basically has honorary yuri status on e.g. Dynasty Reader, even the stories with effectively zero shipping in them. You might not notice if you haven't browsed the site, but it's literally nothing but yuri + Touhou. We even got upload rights just so we could post more Touhou.

(Of course, Touhou being yuri city is part of the reason any hint of straight romance gets a really strong kneejerk reaction from people, including me. But that's also because the lack of usable male characters makes that shipping inherently hamfisted, up to and including literally making up cardboard villager OCs. Basically the only positive example I can remember off the top of my head is Hisona's An Old Poem for the Cuckoo Bird depicting Youki with a 1000-year-old mostly joking crush on Nue, which after some chin-scratching I decided I liked alright. And Hisona of course has plenty of yuri cred to cover for it.)

But although taken for granted, most Touhou yuri is one or more of: a.) On a "blushing maidens thinking about holding hands" level in its approach to romance, b.) Only depicting the starting moments of a relationship, at best - usually just pining, c.) Only off-handedly teasing, basically to acknowledge the ship is there, d.) Showing a very close and loving relationship but leaving the romance part subtextual, even if thinly veiled.

While those are all fine - some of my favorite artists like e.g. Ashiyama undeniably fall under d.) - it means that artists who depict more established couples, and couples that get depicted as more established, stand out. I love when a story is very blunt about two characters, whether the focus is actually on them or not, already being an item. Be it due to a difference in target demographic or what, many of these works seem to have a slight lean towards being more raunchy/horny even when not outright R-18, but I don't actually mind that too much when it does happen - as long as they're fun and raunchy, as opposed to only raunchy or, god forbid, unfun in raunchy ways.

I like how Moyazou depicts Mokou and Keine as basically-married. I like how Atoki depicts YuuParu or SakiYachi after drawing like twenty books of them (each). I like when Kawayabug depicts Tojiko as Miko's beleaguered wife. But the example of the day is obviously risui (of Ladies of Scarlet Devil Mansion), who you might have guessed inspired this ramble. Funnily enough, in LoSDM she seems to have walked back Meiling and Sakuya's relationship coincidentally at the same time she toned down the content to fit SCoOW's guidelines, compared to her usual works that have MeiSaku at a much more established and mutual stage.

But the point stands that it's really fun to see LoSDM almost rub it in your face from the very start - from Meiling's dream to every other conversation she has - that everyone in it is unapologetically and openly lesbian, assumes everyone else to be a lesbian, and doesn't hesitate to talk about it like a (romcom idiot) adult.

Also, risui draw lady very good

[sexy-sapphic-sorcerer]

1: Magic is a Metaphor < 2: Morgana is a Lesbian > 3: Merlin is Gay > 4: Arthur is Bi

Building off of the whole metaphor idea, Morgana's character arc is basically that she starts to question her identity because she's having all of these dreams and thoughts that she doesn't understand. Then Gaius, who is straight up a conversion therapist, literally gaslights her and is like, 'no no, you're just going crazy, you're overreacting, here, why don't you take all of these drugs to suppress those thoughts?'

Meanwhile, Uther is saying all of this stuff about how sorcerers are all evil and should be killed, and Morgana will try to argue with him and he will just be like, 'well, why do you care so much?' And she's all, 'oh, no reason. I'm just an ally. I'm just really passionate about social justice.' Like, girl, we've all been there.

And then once Morgana does come to terms with her identity and she realises how fucked up the way that she was treated is, she goes batshit and starts a revolution and assassinates her dad. And good for her! I honestly think that all repressed lesbians deserve a little bit of murder, it's only fair, especially if they look so hot doing it.

Also, Morgana doesn't have any male love interests. I mean, she will sometimes flirt with men to manipulate them into doing what she wants, but it's very clear that that is what she is doing, she never actually cares about them or follows through.

Besides, Katie McGrath has never played a heterosexual in her life. She's basically straight up said that she played Morgana as a lesbian. You know where she said that? Here:

Hear me out.

Are they technically half-sisters? Yes. But omg the sexual tension between these two is undeniable. You really do think that they're just going to kiss at any given moment. This has been straight up confirmed. This is a quote from the same conversation as earlier between the main producer and Katie McGrath, where they fully admit that there are definitely lesbian undertones there, and not only did both actresses play it that way, but it was written that way. So I rest my case.

Gwen knew about Morgana's prophetic visions from the start and she was never scared of it or tried to deny that it was magic. Instead, she was always by Morgana's bedside (or in her bed) so she could hold her face and stroke her hair and tell her she would be okay. Gayasses.

Although, as Iori Miyazawa can attest, yuri is often best found in the absence of it. Because once Morgana accepts her identity and her magic becomes an unavoidable part of of her life rather than thoughts she could repress, she begins to push Gwen away, often in the form of telling her not to undress her anymore.

Then this tension between them is emphasised when Morgana starts having nightmares of Gwen marrying Arthur and is really upset by it for some reason. I know that she justifies it by saying that she doesn't want Gwen to take her place as queen, but if you think about that for more than 5 seconds, it makes absolutely no sense. Arthur is still going to be king regardless of who he marries, so unless Morgana is planning to follow the legend a bit too closely and marry her brother, then Gwen is absolutely not taking her place.

And yet Morgana spends the entire rest of the show obsessing over Gwen, including: planting false evidence to break up Gwen and Arthur, using necroLancey as a puppet to seduce her, kidnapping Gwen only to tenderly caress her face and force her to have dinner with her, and then of course enchanting Gwen to kill Arthur so that Morgana can be queen, and Gwen will seemingly also still be queen. And they will be two queens, together, platonically. Hmmm

[valtsv]

I think you made a post about Paige and Val meeting and it turning to toxic yuri and I thought it was real so I started listening to tsv again and was so sad when they never met

I wonder what Val would think of Paige *dreamingly*

i did say there was toxic yuri potential there. i think that they're both simultaneously too ideologically opposed and too similar to ever really feel anything positive towards each other (you're abominable socially, you're just a little bit too much like me), but sadomasochistic lesbian hatesex would not do their relationship any disservice. it might actually save them from doing something worse.

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

Following this blog is making me realize I really don't think I get what makes shipping appealing to most people.

Like, whats all this about character dynamics being more important than gender? How do you get invested in and want to see a relationship if your not attracted to at least one of the characters? Are there really straight dudes and lesbians out there reading / watching yaoi & straight girls and gay dudes out there reading / watching yuri?

Also not sure why people get invested in ships between characters that basically never interact or both have incompitable orientations or especially one where both have a mutual hatred of each other in canon.

Like, unless it has the potential to appeal to a very specific kink or fetish I have, I think almost all the ships I've submitted here involve at least one character that canonically has a one-sided crush or attraction to the other.

Is this the reason people think im a pedo for shipping child characters with eachother :(

If you need to find at least one of the characters attractive, it probably means you're shipping in a self-insert way, or like... to wank to them or something. I think most people just like exploring character dynamics in writing, their imagination or art.

That's also why it's so much fun to ship enemies together. There's so much more to explore when you think about the path they would need to go on in order to date, rather than a couple that are already attracted to eachother. At least in my opinion. (And enemies tend to follow the same patterns that people with crushes do, since they're obsessed with the other person). Light and L want eachother dead or in prison and they are probably the most popular death note ship because of it. Those two think about eachother 24/7.

And for characters that don't interact in canon, it's fun to imagine "what could have been" or what could happen post-canon, pre-canon etc. And sometimes it's just for fun. Shipping in general is just for fun and doesn't have to be taken seriously.

And if we're going into my personal experience - i'm mostly attracted to men but I think yuri is fun to read/watch. I also like gay romance, and sometimes straight romance. Romance is romance. yknow. It helps to imagine that heterosexuality isn't the default for everyone. A lot of writers miss out on good pairings because they make their characters strictly hetero. (just a personal opinion, writers choices should be respected, etc etc)

It just sounds like you're shipping with your hand down your pants.

(Also if anyone wants to respond to this, please write a comment or a reblog instead of sending me an ask!)

[soup-mother]

i do have a manifesto in development in my head about how I feel like one of the weakest yuri tropes is all of the things around like "girls only" spaces. BUT it's strongest when one of the love interests is transfem and the girl in love with her has to sadly lock eyes as she has to go into the mens bathroom instead of the girl being able to just hold her and wash her hair and make her feel safe

like exploring those spaces through the lense of both someone excluded from them for being trans (or even just out as a lesbian so they're excluded because ppl think she's going to creep on them) AND from the perspective of someone who knows she's a girl and is hit with deep discomfort about the exclusion of the girl she loves.

[trialruntantrum]

Oh these lesbians are SO toxic. They're like crazy toxic. We're-soul-mates-but-I'll-still fucking-kill-you toxic. The most toxic toxic yuri you've ever seen and they're both hot and madly in love with each other because who else would still love them after all the terrible things they've done.

I love women :)

[sliipppy]

Self Indulgent Young Justice/Teen Titans 2003 Relationship and Sexuality Headcanons

Cassie and Kon convince themselves they like each other in Young Justice because they're both gay and closeted. They do love each other, but not romantically. They confuse that for attraction. Plus, I think Cassie is a lesbian stereotype, and Kon is like a gay man stereotype, so it makes sense that the two would go for each other. When they finally get together, they don't kiss because they tell their friends its cause "they both wanna take things slow". Sometimes they'll hold hands (scandalous)

Meanwhile, Cassie is like madly in love with Cissie but doesn't realize it because that's just how best friends are. Plus, she has the whole 'crush on Kon' thing going. I know everyone and their mom loves TimKon, and don't get me wrong, so do I! But in Young Justice, Tim and Kon are constantly butting heads. I don't think Kon starts liking Tim like that until the end of young justice, and he starts to like REALLY like him during Teen Titans.

Cissie and Anita kissed once at a sleepover but never told anyone. Young Justice for Cissie is like a crush fest. She's a bisexual icon, and she's had a crush on every single member of the team at some point (but her most serious ones were Cassie and Anita). She kissed Tim on the cheek in that one panel. She had a crush on Kon in the beginning, and I like to think she had a small crush in Bart but got over it pretty fast, because I've always saw Bart and Cissie as like brother and sister kinda lol (I always think of the panel where she comforts him about Max during the intergalactic baseball arc.)

Cissie can't decide whether she likes Anita or Cassie more and she also can't really come to terms with the fact that she might like girls.

Anita was basically always solid in the fact that she's bisexual. While the kiss with Cissie definitely awakened something in Cissie, Anita was like, "That was nice, but I think we're better as friends." She dates Slobo but doesn't really like him like him, but she thinks he's endearing, so the two are just a generic silly freshman year couple. Yeah, they won't last, but it's cute while it lasts, and they'll be friends when it ends. Anita's dad is super chill and had some "if you're gay I'll till love you the same." talk with her after he saw her concerning obsession with Diana Ross.

Greta hated Stephanie at first because she had a one-sided crush on Tim and was jealous of Stephanie because of it, but she gets over it and develops a crush on Stephanie. (This is canon, trust me. This is my craziest pair, I think, but trust me on one-sided GretaSteph)

Teen Titans era – later teens, Cassie and Kon are on and off dating. Kon and Tim start to get closer. They like eachother. It's so obvious to everyone else. Kory and Donna think it's cute. Cassie meanwhile, still madly in love with Cissie, beings her toxic doomed yuri arc with Rose Wilson. Rose is her official gay awakening. Her and Rose have the most tragic situationship of all time for like a year.

Okay skip forward to the sadness. Kon dies, leaving Cassie and Tim more confused and sad then ever. Cassie loved Kon, really loved Kon, but not in that way, which makes her feel even more guilty about his death because she felt that she was lying to him while he was alive and she still didn't understand her feelings. Tim on the other hand is going FUCKING crazy. He just lost Steph, then his dad, and now Kon and he's not understand ANYTHINGGG!!! Bro tries to clone Kon and when Cassies like "bro what the hell are you doing?!" It causes like this falling out between the two despite the fact that Cassie and Tim were literally bestie because they both loved Kon so much in such different ways and had all this pent up confusion...and then we get to the infamous panel where they make out while crying. In their shared grief and confusion in their own emotions they kiss. It's weird and both of them literally hate it because they literally are like siblings to eachother also she's a lesbian and Tim just lost like 3 of his actual lovers in the span of a year (Steph, Darla, and Kon) so it was weird and fucked up but they were weird and fucked up.

Skip forward, and Kon comes back to life. Everything's happy! Yay! Kon and Cassie have a heart-to-heart and breakup because they're both gay. Cassie asks Cissie out. Tim comes out as bi and dates Bernard. Kon is like, "omg I have a chance," but it is also sad because like Tim has a boyfriend that isn't him. Stephanie is like "no bro he totally likes you" Eventually, they break up. Idk why bro. (I'm not really a Bernard fan, sorry, remember the self-indulgent in the title?) and Steph convinces Kon to ask him out (I love thar after Urban Legends Stephanie and Kon are like, best friends) and BOOM timkon. Everyone is happy. Happily ever after.

And rip Greta and Anita, we haven't seen you in forever miss you queens 🙏🙏🙏

[zukkaoru]

could you tell me more about why you dislike femskk?

okay disclaimer before i begin: this is not meant to be a dig on every person who enjoys femskk. the biggest reason i don't like it is honestly because it's just not my cup of tea and honestly it really makes no difference to me if other people like it. but beyond that my biggest issues with it are

1. the phenomenon of fans "yuri-ifying" the most popular m/m ship and then using that to prove they like female characters and f/f ships. this is not a bsd-exclusive thing; it happens with stsg too and i don't like femstsg for the same reason. but there's a big difference between actually liking female characters and just genderbending (or even making transfem) the big m/m ship. i literally went to the f/f category in bsd on ao3 the other day looking for fics and about half of them are skk fics instead of fics about like. the actual female characters in bsd. who i was looking for fics of. similarly, there have been some redraw trends going around twitter - specifically the i prefer girls cover redraw - and i have seen. i don't even know how many femskk redraws of that (along with a couple femfyolais and a femrimlaine) but only one redraw with actual female characters from bsd. same with the scene 14 redraw that was going around, and while that one wasn't originally two female characters, i have still seen significantly more femskk (and femsigzai, femsigchuu, femfyolai, etc) than i have ships with even one character who is female in the source material.

and imo this phenomenon is made even worse in the bsd fandom bc so many fans just see bsd as the skk show. so of course they're writing off the actual female characters; they literally don't care about anything besides skk. and obviously i can't do anything to force anyone to care about other characters but like.... bsd has so many other wonderful characters and dynamics (both romantic and platonic) that a good half of the fanbase won't even glance at because they're not skk. i do like skk, but bsd is about so much more than just them. they are, objectively, only one small part of it. like if you only care about skk, then just be outright about it and don't pretend you're "proving" you like female characters and sapphic ships bc you like femskk too

2. of the fans who only like skk and nothing else about bsd, most of them. don't even characterize dazai and chuuya correctly? i think the some of the best skk characterizations i've seen have been from people who actually like other characters and ships too, and some of the worst skk characterization i've seen has come from people who literally don't care about any other ships or characters. this isn't a hard and fast rule obviously but even with 30k skk fics on ao3, i have struggled to find ones that actually feel true to their characters. and the characterization seems to only get worse when it's femskk. if you're just going to turn femdazai and femchuuya into two completely different people, what's the point in it even being skk? why not write k.ousano or h.igugin or even a ship with one canonically female character? if you have to change the core characteristics of both dazai and chuuya... do you even really like them?

3. about femdazai: i actually don't mind the transfem dazai headcanon in general but most fans get her wrong. i made a post about it here but basically so many times i see femdazais that are just. completely unrecognizable as dazai. you can't strip away core aspects of dazai like idk the fact that dazai doesn't show any skin from neck to toe just because you made her a girl. i have seen some femdazai that's good! but i have seen so much that is just fundamentally wrong for dazai's character as a whole. mostly on twitter.

4. about femchuuya: i really truly just don't get femchuuya. i THINK the hype here is probably bc lesbians seem to get attached to chuuya (which. valid. i am also a lesbian chuuya fan.) and so they want to draw a chuuya they can be attracted to (i.e. femchuuya) which like. cool whatever i'm not here to judge. but looking at it from a "would this character actually identify as female" perspective, i don't actually think i can picture that for chuuya. maybe it's just because i so strongly hc them as nonbinary? idk. this one is honestly just a neutral "i don't see that but you do you"

tl;dr: from what i've seen, femskk is often mischaracterized, and genderbending the big m/m ships in a fandom is often a way fans "prove" they like the female characters and f/f ships while not actually caring about anything other than their main m/m ship

[carlyraejepsans]

genuinely though liking age gaps and milfs ARE two separate things, I don't get why you're saying they're the same? like if you like Queen that's liking milfs, but liking Queen x Noelle that would be liking age gaps, and you specifically said age gaps, not milfs. it's kinda dodgy? can you explain why you think liking age gaps and milfs is the same thing, because I'm trying but I can't follow the logic.

i am going to explain this because you don't seem malignant and just genuinely confused, but i need you to understand that this is a you problem. and you accidentally chose the perfect example for that. queen x noelle is an age gap... sure.

queen x noelle is also yuri. it's f/f! that's all you need to fit the definition. doesn't say anything about age or (allegorical) family relation. speaking of: dess x noelle incest would ALSO be yuri. and yet when i said "this was originally a rocky mother-daughter relationship, but i decided to make them lesbians in the end", everyone CORRECTLY assumed that i meant they were no longer related.

what's happening here is that YOU arbitrarily decided that "age gap" is a bad word, regardless of context. sans and toriel have an age gap. it's not one that would foster an unhealthy power dynamic between them (which is what i beef with whenever people bring it up to discredit them), but it IS an age gap nonetheless. not only is it an age gap, that age gap is an inherent part of what i enjoy about their relationship. immortals don't exist IRL, so we don't really have an equivalent, but toriel is ANCIENT. even while interpreting her centuries in the RUINs as an allegory for the way trauma fucks with your ability to grow past it (like flowey and resetting), she has lived for so long that it does affect the way she experiences her life, a way that is both similar and immensely different from the way sans does as a mortal man.

in deltarune, too, where boss monsters likely don't exist and they both age similarly to humans. i LIKE seeing sans as younger, even more so than his undertale counterpart (theory reasons aside), because then what you have as a dynamic is a "mature" adult woman, a mother of two mostly grown up children, formerly a picture perfect wife who lived her life like a model both religiously and socially for the isolated, tight-knit community around her, suddenly separating from her husband and not coming to church and cracking that façade of white picket fenced perfection.... who proceeds to fall for a YOUNG, charming man from out of town who just moved into the place and doesn't have any attachments there yet. they're total opposites with completely different life experiences which is precisely what she needs as a character AND what makes the relationship compelling. Them having different lives due to their age is a crucial part of that.

that's an age gap ship! it doesn't make it not an age gap just because the term technically also includes paedophilia or unhealthy power disparities. if you can't fathom the fact that those statements are both true, that only speaks to your immaturity. it doesn't say a single thing about me.

[jjs-brainrot]

So I've finally read How Do We Relationship? by Tamifull

(spoilers for up to chapter 121 ahead)

What exactly is a relationship? Is it some natural part of the human experience where you pick a life partner? is it a social contract between individuals to ensure exclusive romantic and sexual feelings between each other? Is sex a requirement for a relationship? Is romance even?

I don't know to be honest. What I do know is this: How Do We Relationship? by Tamifull hit me like a truck and then backed up over the corpse.

It might be one of the most nuanced, unflinching and uncompromising works about understanding relationships I've read. I think, in general, a lot of romance fiction feels overly wishful. While I can certainly appreciate a good gushy and feel good romance, it kinda gets tiresome seeing the same "will they, won't they (they will eventually)" and "love at first sight (it works out even though they literally have no chemistry)" stories regurgitated over and over again.

So much of it just feels too fake for me. Like I'm not watching two characters come to understand and fall for each other, I'm watching two halves of a couple who only exist to be a couple. Chemistry? Completely optional! Hardships? Temporary and will only make them love each other more afterwards. Break ups? Reserved exclusively as a failure state or for purely abusive relationships…

What sets How Do We Relationship? apart from its peers is its commitment to understanding its characters as people rather than archetypes. People who each have their own wants, fears, feelings towards sex and romance and most importantly: their own personal definition of what a relationship should be. People who when confronted with each other think they understand how everything should go, only to find out that the other person has a completely different understanding that doesn't fully jive with theirs.

The only yuri series I can think of that does something similar is Yuri is My Job! by Miman. Yuri is My Job! focuses heavily on the idea of fake relationships in Class S stories with it frequently asking "what actually makes something a relationship?"

A lot of Yuri is My Job! is primarily a critique on Class S stories first (possibly also a direct refutation of Maria Watches Over Us… I still need to watch MariMite so I can't say for certain) with a lot of its characters being subversions of classic Class S archetypes. So a lot of its dissections of relationships are done in the context of Class S stories.

That being said, seeing a series directly refuting the idea of a relationship being static and instead coming to the conclusion that the only ones that can decide what a relationship is are the people involved? That stuck with me. How Do We Relationship? is far a more focused dissection of what it means to be in a relationship, or at least, what means for its particularly cast of characters.

Take, for instances, our two main characters: Miwa and Saeko

Miwa and Saeko start out as friends, but after coming out to each other and finding out they're both lesbians, they decide on a whim to date. At first glance, they seem like the perfect couple! After all, they bounce off of each other's personalities really well, enjoy each other's company (both out and about and in the bedroom) and in general seem to care for each other quite deeply. They were made for each other, right? Well, no.

They're both individuals with vastly different personalities, experiences and feelings from each other. Over time they begin to see things in their relationship that bother them. Mostly little things here and there. Nothing they want to start a fight over or strain their relationship over at first but… Small wounds still fester. It eventually finally comes to a head a little bit after Miwa visits her old crush in a high school reunion. It's very clear to both Saeko and Miwa that she hasn't actually gotten over her past feelings for her high school crush. What's more clear to Saeko is that Miwa doesn't feel the same level of love for her and she does for Miwa. Eventually they just… break up and go back to being friends.

In most romance stories, a break up is regularly seen as either the ultimate failure state for a relationship, a temporary set back for a relationship to overcome or purely as an escape valve from an abusive or just kind of shit relationship. The reality is that there many different reasons for a relationship to end.

Could Miwa and Saeko have worked it out? With the path they were heading down, no. Neither of them were willing to fully open up about their problems as both feared hurting the other. Which just ended up with them hurting each other even more. If they had continued the course, their break up might have been far more painful and resulted in them not being able to be friends any more.

And they do get to go back to being friends even after being exes!

I think back to my aunt who divorced her husband several decades ago. They ended their relationship but decided to remain close in part for their daughter's benefit. Over the years they've remained close friends and have gone back to living with each other as well. There's no hard rule that becoming exes means you have to fully cut each other off if that's not what you both want. Certainly there might still be mixed feelings between you both (Miwa and Saeko's relationship as friends certainly takes some huge bumps after they break up), but you shouldn't follow along with what society expects from you both in a relationship versus what you both want from YOUR relationship.

And that right there is Tamifull's thesis statement with How Do We Relationship?: don't determine how your life and relationships should be based on what society expects them to be.

Tamifull doesn't hold back anything when it comes to depicting how society treats relationships in general but also how it treats gay people in specific. While the physical danger of homophobia is always a constant that makes many queer people not want to be open with their queerness, being constantly other-ed in most social situations (whether intentionally or not) can frequently be reason enough to want to stay in the closet. Insensitive questions (that are more often born from ignorance rather than malice), being always seen as an outlier, frequently having to lie about who you like and a million other microaggressions that just build up as extra hardship in a queer relationships. Relationships are already not easy to keep together, but adding additional outside stressors can strain them even harder. Enter Shiho.

Shiho was Miwa's aforementioned high school crush whom she reconnected with during a high school reunion. After Miwa and Saeko's break up, Miwa started keeping up contact with her more and more and eventually has the opportunity to meet with her again. Miwa goes to meet with Shiho in order to confess her past feelings for her. Miwa is fully expecting to get turned down but when she meets Shiho, Shiho seems far more receptive and warm towards Miwa than she was expecting. Whatever mental protections Miwa had against the idea of actually having her feelings reciprocated crumbled as it seems like Shiho might have feelings for her as well? Could she actually get together with her old crush?

Unfortunately, while Shiho does have feelings for Miwa, she doesn't feel strong enough to deal with all the baggage that comes with being in a lesbian relationship with Miwa. She very clearly put a lot of thought into the subject, and while she does care for Miwa, she just can't put herself in a relationship with Miwa. Shiho isn't in the wrong about her own feelings and she doesn't invalidate Miwa's. But it still ends up breaking Miwa far more than if Shiho had out right rejected her.

External factors can have a major effect on relationships but internal factors have arguably far more impact on relationships. Namely: sex and romance. Or more specifically: how everyone has different levels of interest in sex and romance.

Figuring out that I was ace and aro took way longer than it probably should have. "I have no interest in having sex with someone but I still get off to porn so clearly I can't be ace!" was legitimately a thought that stopped me from fully embracing being ace for several years. Eventually I figured out that sex-repulsion isn't a requirement of being ace and that the ace spectrum covers a pretty wide variety of experiences under it and that my own is just as valid as the others.

Over the years I've had to engrave a pretty simple idea into my soul: there is no universal experience when it comes to sex and love. Regardless of whether you're allo, ace or aro, you'll have very different feelings towards sexual and romantic interest than everyone else. Let's take, for example, Rika.

Rika is one of the supporting straight characters of the cast. She's also arguably the most sexually active member of the main cast with easily the highest body count of them all. And yet she does not want a relationship past friends-with-benefits. I'm not sure if she's necessarily aro or just not currently interested in a romantic relationship, but the point is that the main thing she wants from her relationships is sex. And that is completely fine! It sucks that when she explains this to dudes she just fucked who want to start dating her that she only wanted a sexual relationship with them and they respond by thinking she must have some family issues that make her so sexually active (she doesn't) or they respond derogatorily that she's just a slut. That's just part of who she is, there is nothing wrong with her. If she was a guy, it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

And then on the flip side, you have Tamaki.

Some time after Miwa recovered from her heartbreak over Shiho (and after being sex friends with Saeko again for a bit), Miwa starts dating a year younger kouhai by the name of Tamaki. Tamaki is asexual/alloromantic, she very much has romantic feelings for Miwa and even enjoys kissing and looking at Miwa's body, but she has a very low sex drive. Miwa, on the other hand, has a pretty high sex drive. Tamaki and Miwa together might be one of the best depictions of an allosexual and asexual relationship I've ever seen.

I've know a number of aspecs who've gone through a similar situation as Miwa and Tamaki. Some are certainly able to come to an understanding with their allo partners about each other sexuality, personal boundaries and fulfilling each other's needs in a way that's healthy for both parties. But a lot end up in similar situations as Miwa and Tamaki.

Where in one or both partners feel like they're hurting each other. Some aces feel guilt over not being able to provide for their partner's sexual needs, even if their allo partner assures that them feeling comfortable is far more important to them. Some allos might feel like they're raping their ace partners when they have sex, even if their ace partner expressly gives consent because they want satisfy their partner's needs, even if they themselves don't get anything out of the experience. If you get both together, you end up with a feedback loop of self hatred where the ace person sees their own lack sexual interest as actively harming the person they love and the allo person sees themselves as a monster for wanting to have sex with the person they love.

It's a toxic situation to be in, but it's also one that's hard to leave as both parties feel they themselves are in the wrong and their solutions to correct their error (the allo refraining from asking for sex and the ace more freely offering up sex) just lead to the situation escalating to the point of serious damage to one or both parties.

And unfortunately, that seems to have happened to Miwa. As of writing this, we're at chapter 121 so we're still early on the current arc, but it's looking like Miwa breaking up with Tamaki has done a number on her sex drive. I'm no expert on fluctuations in sexual interest due to trauma, so I won't dive too deeply into this (especially since we're still so early in the new arc). However, associating your sex drive as something that's actively harming your partner to the point that you leave them even though you still love them? Yeah, that's going to cause some damage.

I could ramble on and on about other aspects and topics that How Do We Relationship? does so well (Yuria/Saeko insecurities and dependencies, Saeko/Miwa's brief stint as friends-with-benefits, etc), but I've already said far, far more then I was originally already planning to say. So I think I might have save them for some future posts if I remember them.

So to finally end this now very long essay, I return to my original question: "what exactly is a relationship?"

I don't know, I ain't a cop. Whatever you and your partner(s) say it is, is what it is. But watch out though!

[bung3665]

Some Dynamics and Character Lore From GGZ

Given the title, this won't cover everything, especially the dynamics that are present for GGZ-only characters, but I thought I'd make a post for Hi3 characters that are present in GGZ for those of you who like to draw fanart/write fanfiction. As well as the fact that I like talking about GGZ.

Fair warning: this is going to be long, I have a bad habit of going into too much detail on things like this, so please bear with me.

For this post in particular, I was going to focus on multiple characters but this ended up being so long I relegated to it just being about Kiana and Mei, and more specifically two versions of them. I might make a follow up post for Bronya/Seele/Sin at another time.

Trigger warning for attempted suicide below. I feel like I should include this just in case.

Short introduction but that's all I have to say before diving into the material.

Kiana/Mei

It shouldn't really be a surprise that Kiana's greatest dynamic is with Mei and only Mei. The two are a lot more blatant with their feelings and relationship in GGZ. However, their relationship is also more tumultuous than in Hi3. They are a good example of doomed yuri, besides the ending to the Reborn storyline, which is bittersweet at the least and good at the most.

The writing of GGZ carries the same theme as Honkai 3rd, fighting against the fate of the world and for all that's beautiful. GGZ tends to explore the darker aspects to this setting, often times mixing in heavier themes while doubling down on the struggles of the characters. At times, it can be almost over the top, but I think its cohesive and still a finely crafted story.

It should come as no shocker that Kiamei is the primary ship of GGZ, it's outright confirmed that they love each other at points throughout the story. Sometimes it is for lesbian bait, but on the whole I think their writing is good and the way they rely on each other for support is nice.

Kiana and Mei are more grounded in GGZ, if I had to word it. They're still incredibly resilient, but there are times where they crack mentally. It happens to Kiana more than it does to Mei (save for the last arc, where it's all about Mei suffering), but seeing them work through these things does deepen the bond they have.

Now with all that said, let's move on to the actual content of this post.

Retrospective

Retro is the story you play when you first start the game, this is the "first half" of GGZ's story in some regard. GGZ's story and setting is divided into separate eras, with the main two being Retrospective and Reborn. Era Zero, taking place before both of them, was never fully completed unfortunately.

In Retro, Kiana and Mei initially start off on the wrong foot. Mei is sort of hostile towards Kiana (a result of her becoming a Herrscher) and Kiana is a bit insensitive to Mei on introduction, but after learning about Mei's past, Kiana manages to get through to Mei after their battle and the two make up.

Will put it out there that much like Kiana in the Hi3 mangas and early Hi3 story, she's a perv here. Yet her crush on Mei is a genuine thing.

Things calm down for a while, but when Bronya enters the picture and Mei begins to dote on her like a big sister, Kiana gets a little...possessive, and jealous. She's quite immature when it comes to romance in Retro. And while Mei is more serene about things she does care for Kiana too.

The two have their own unresolved matters, however. For Kiana, it's finding her dad who went missing when she was young (note: Kiana in GGZ is not a clone like in Hi3, this is the real and original Kiana Kaslana). And for Mei, it's regarding Ryoma's sentencing and his ties to Anti-Entropy. The two bring it up at points and reassure each other that they will find their dads which is sweet.

Things take a turn for the worse when Cocolia attacks St. Freya with the Moonlight Throne battleship. When the ship crashes into the church where the furnace containing the core of the second Herrscher is (yeah they stored Sirin's core there), Kiana somewhat fuses with the core and has a complete mental breakdown when Cocolia reveals the truth about Siegfried and how Kiana murdered him when she accidentally became a Herrscher while young.

This causes Kiana to become a Herrscher due to the rising amounts of Honkai energy in her body. If you're wondering about Cocolia, she dies by heading into the Honkai furnace and gets swallowed up by all the Honkai.

Kiana kills everyone after becoming the Herrscher of Finality (or Herrscher of The End, Final Herrscher etc), and the last person she kills is Mei.

It's a sad scene through and through, and the CGs are great. Even more so because at the end, when Kiana and Mei are floating above the world, Kiana still cries while the world ends.

See you in the next world originates from this scene. Very good piece of music.

So what happens after? The world ends, Mei and everyone die, but what happens to Kiana?

Kiana became a puppet for the Honkai, even after the initial catastrophe that occurred at St. Freya, small groups of people managed to survive the world-wide Honkai eruption. But they too would be wiped out by Kiana.

She didn't move, she didn't think anymore, and she had no emotion. Only when the Honkai needed her to kill whatever remnants of civilization rose up did she move.

This carried on for hundreds of years, or tens of thousands, but by the end Kiana had killed all of humanity.

And then she regained her consciousness and was faced with the reality of how many she had killed and how much blood she had spilled. To save herself from the suffering she tried to end her life, but because she was a Herrscher, she was immortal.

No one could kill Kiana, not even Kiana herself. When Kiana realized this fact she gave up all resistance. She deluded her mind with memories of the past and paralyzed herself on the spear she had impaled herself with, until the day Honkai disappeared from the world.

Quite the terrible end. I won't be covering Reborn in this post, but I thought it would be cool to write about the Fire Moth DLC side story, since their relationship in that story builds off of Retro.

Fire Moth

To understand Kiana and Mei's relationship in Fire Moth, you first need an understanding of the setting. The events of Fire Moth happen during Reborn's story, during the story chapters as a matter of fact.

But Fire Moth itself technically takes place in a stigma space where the world has turned desolate five years after Kiana became a Herrscher and destroyed everything. It should be noted that this is the world contained in the stigma space, so the setting of the story is not taking place in the real world. The backstories and characters are acting upon how they were in Retro (and were materialized by Kyuushou's memories of them).

This is Kyuushou's stigmata space, and she has the stigmata of both Kiana and Mei from Retro. Hence why this world bears so much familiarity to Retro.

Most life on the surface is dead, and the survivors in Nagazora have banded together to form the organization "Fire Moth", or "Moth Who Chases The Flame", under the leadership of an older Bronya.

Houraiji Kyuushou is the protagonist of Fire Moth, and you play through the story as her amnesiac self. Kiana is still the Final Herrscher, and rather than a being who is carrying out the Honkai's will endlessly, or someone who still has enough emotion and humanity to cry, this Kiana has gone deep into nihilism and has become devoid of most emotion.

This is a Kiana who knows what happened thousands of years ago and guilt has eaten away at her and left her with nothing.

CG of Kiana when Kyuushou first meets her in a dream.

To get a good idea of what Kiana and Mei are going through in Fire Moth, how about this short conversation I machine-translated. Might be inaccurate, I don't know Chinese that well! But hopefully it helps. Some of it has been taken from Guns Girl Z Cutscene Interpreter as well, I translated some of the text that was still in Chinese.

(Mei's text is purple, and Kiana's is blue).

Mei…what would you do if the world didn't fall apart?

If it hadn't collapsed...

I would probably have been like an ordinary girl, studying something I like, enrolling in a university I wished to go to, and then starting my own family, and walking through a happy and uneventful life with the person I love.

Kiana, what about you?

For me…as long as I'm with Mei, I'm already satisfied.

Really…don't say such embarrassing things...If it's Kiana then there must be something more worthy of pursuing.

If it's the old me…I do have hundreds of wishes I want to fulfill...

I wanted to attend the same school as Mei, eat our bento together under a cherry blossom tree, and spend our entire lunch break lazily.

I want to travel around the world with Mei, take pictures of us in beautiful landscapes, and keep our figures in a precious photo album forever.

I want to build a small cabin by the sea with Mei, watch the tide rise and fall together, collect seashells on the sand blown by the sea breeze together, and then fall asleep under the embrace of the moonlight.

There are so many more wishes…well there are so many more plans too..

But now…

I just want to stay by your side quietly like this forever.

Mei...please give me your hand.

Yes...

If it's possible, will you stay with me until the end of the world?

Kiana…thank you.

Thank you for loving me so much. For protecting me so much.

But both of us, no, we all, we all understand.

That this is a long-cherished wish that simply cannot be fulfilled.

Because...because all of it...has been destroyed by your hands.

Every promise has been turned into ash... and we can never go back.

I'm so sorry Kiana...I'm so sorry.

It's time for us to say our farewells...

(Kiana alone with Mei's ribbon).

...

I understand.

In fact, I understand it better than anyone.

This is the mistake I made...I've destroyed our future with my own hands.

Such an ending is the best punishment for me.

Alone in a world without you. Even death is too kind for me.

(There's a little bit more to this scene, but it's not relevant to this post).

During the final battle between Kiana and Mei (they're both in the same nihilistic and existential boat here, so naturally they are the two overarching antagonists), when Mei falls in battle, Kiana bids her farewell and calls Mei her "only regret".

At the end of Fire Moth, Kyuushou manages to reignite Kiana's wish from forty-two thousand years ago, which was to bring hope to the world. What Kiana was chasing all this time was a sliver of hope in a world that gave her none.

Kiana relinquishes her existence after their battle, so she along with Mei disappear from the world entirely. No one remembers them and nobody recognizes their names. Kyuushou remarks that Kiana's dream was to live in a world without Honkai, a sentiment echoed by both Kiana and Mei.

Fun fact: if you 100% all of Fire Moth, you get this wonderful CG of the two.

Conclusion

If you made it this far, thanks. I'm a bit out of my element when writing things like this, so if you have any questions on anything I'd be happy to answer them. I appreciate GGZ a lot, so making this was fun and I hope I can do more of it for the others.

I have a nagging feeling this was a bit too long, so I apologize for that. I ended up explaining a lot of GGZ's lore when this was mainly supposed to be about relationship dynamics...oops.

But to summarize, Kiana and Mei's relationship isn't entirely different from what they have in Hi3, but just like in Hi3 they have their own struggles and nuances. Mostly in the formed of doomed yuri but that's beside the point. I like their relationship in GGZ, at times its as simple as a few exchanges before a battle, and at others its the crux of the story itself.

With all that being said, I hope you enjoyed the read!!

[punkeropercyjackson]

Hobie is SUCH a trans girlliker and i mean that both in the sense his type in women is trans girls and that Hobie likes girls in a transgender way.That's not a straight boy,that's a transfag who falls in love with every tgirl he befriends and my evidence is Gwen,Margo because why would Punkbyte NOT be a thing and even Miles' egg ass.He's pre-thrifting and i'm obligatoraly joking when i say he's into her largely because he clocked her,not that it's hard.The rest of the time when i'm not in my black tboy swag rep Hobie brainrot,i stan transfem Hobie aka my DAUGHTER whomst i adopted and love very much and he's a he/she/they lesbian to me since Gwen's such a girlliker too AND so beyond down horrendous for her so it all comes together and t4t yuri Punkflower is like a rare precious gem to me and them and Margo are that 'alt gf vs gamer gf:fight''why would they fight they're in love' post.GIRLLIKER HOBIE <333333