#miyazawan yuri

[tragicnpc]

[is-this-yuri]

Are oreos yuri?

Two cookies, attracted by their similarity, yet separated by the very thing that also sticks them together. Without this conflict, they would fall apart. It binds them, but keeps them from being closer.

Conclusion: Oreos are yuri.

[xelidonia]

Classical Yuri of Absence

About 2500 years ago, Sappho wrote:

Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα καὶ Πληΐαδες μέσαι δέ νύκτες, πάρα δ' ἔρχετ' ὤρα, ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

which I translate as:

The moon is set, and the Pleiades, in the middle of the night; The hours come and go, yet I lie alone

This is the perfect example of Yuri of Absence. Even setting aside the fact that it's a poem by Sappho, the essence of this poem is unmistakably yuri. The yearning. The vast emptiness of time and space. The way the Moon and the Pleiades are both absent and gendered female. The way the speaker is also female, but we don't know that until she uses the female form of "alone". Everything about this poem makes you feel the Absence of Girls In Love like an ache. Sappho, you genius, I yearn for you too across unfathomable time.

[cyberantiquities]

I wrote about Sappho fragment 2 and the queer resonances of empty landscapes. Through the lens of, uh, that one interview with Iori Miyazawa. I’m sending this blog out as a newsletter, so please sign up if you’re interested!

[yuriskies]

I would like to float Michael Swanwick's 1999 Hugo Award winning short story "The Very Pulse of the Machine" as an ur-example of Miyazawan yuri. For me it has a very similar vibe to the sci-fi/landscape elements of Otherside Picnic, and I think fans of that might be interested in reading it. More below the break in case you want to go in without spoilers. Read it! It's good!

So like, brief summary in case you didn't read it, Martha and Juliet are the first humans to land on Io, and the story picks up immediately after a catastrophic rover crash that has killed Juliet and left Martha in an extreme survival situation. With a limited amount of air, Martha has to trudge across the hostile landscape of Io's surface. As she uses on methamphetamine to make the trip, Martha begins seeing ethereal visions and Juliet's corpse quotes poetry and hints at a vast machine-like intelligence inhabiting the moon's sulfur deposits.

The Very Pulse of the Machine is strange and defies any easy story categorization. I definitely wouldn't call it a "true" yuri SF, but there are aspects that I twigged on that resonate with Iori Miyazawa's aesthetic. There isn't a romantic relationship between Martha and Juliet, but little aspects of the narration hint at something complex and ill-defined between them.

The story plays around with a sense of finality between the two - how much of Juliet's speech is Martha's drug-addled memories of Juliet quoting poetry verses, the reanimated thoughts of the dead, or the machine-like intelligence attempting to communicate through Juliet's knowledge is kept intentionally vague. It becomes the springboard for Swanwick to explore Martha's sense of loss, feelings of social inadequacy, and her desperate struggle to keep self-serving dreams and reality separate really resonate with what Miyazawa was calling "yuri of absence".

I think there are also aspects to this story that also illustrate what Miyazawa meant when he said landscapes are inherently yuri. The version of Io in The Very Pulse of the Machine is ethereal as hell - volcanic plumes and twisting magnetic fields illuminate its sky, while sulfur dioxide flowers bloom from its surface in between stygian lakes of molten sulfur and sulfur dioxide vent blizzards. There's this wonderful moment where Martha sees triboelectric discharges illuminating Juliet's body and tapping at her feet, and for a moment the text leaves you to wonder if it's an ancient, lonely machine yearning for contact reaching out to connect with them both.

Also just gotta say that until I go to the grave I will consider the end high-class yuri, no matter what anyone tells me.

[flowergirlmiwa]

if i were to try and give a real explanation of what yuri is, it definitely wouldn't end at "anime girls in love", it would be like essay length and have fifteen citations

[ltmctrung]

knight night

[kaiasky]

terrible rpg idea: no dice no masters game that rejects the distinction between characters and setting elements. every "character-like" sheet has pick up/put down rules & impulses. Setting elements get and spend tokens etc.

& i think ideally like the sheets themselves could either be a single character/small group/nonliving force depending on the player's choices for looks

[studentofetherium]

this is, simultaneously, identical to Miyazawan yuri, and also the exact opposite

[arienai]

Miyazawan Yuri. Literal Yuri. Both are yuri. Everything is yuri.

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

Miyazawan-style yuri understanders are becoming too powerful. Girls will look at a post that mentions two separate things and realize that it is also yuri. Perhaps even the relationship between yuri understanders and yuri itself could be….

[is-this-yuri]

not a is ___ yuri? question, but any yuri media recs?

Otherside Picnic is quite possibly the best yuri series currently in existence. It is a matter of taste, as it doesn't contain all the same tropes or even the general vibe of the notable and popular yuris. The characters, in particular the main character are quite frankly weird and won't be everyone's cup of tea, though if you resonate with them you will end up really liking them. It's a heartfelt and authentic story about queerness and how queer love can break social boundaries and be beautiful in a unique way.

The story has themes like that as well as themes about communication, self discovery, trauma, and exploration of fear. It's spooky, trippy, lovecraftian, and sci-fi, and has a lot of humor. The slow burn is very slow, but the interactions between the two main girls and the main character's narration are deeply romantic in unexpected ways.

I would highly reccomend reading the novels, as the narration of the main character is a large part of the enjoyment. As someone who doesn't really read books, the novels were able to capture me and hold my attention. That said, I consider the manga to be a suitable alternative, but it's going to be a very long time until it catches up with the juiciest parts of the novels and you'll be missing a lot if you only read the manga. The anime is enjoyable only if you really love the series, as it's kind of bad overall. I reccomend starting with either the manga or novels, but try the novels if you can.

Otherside Picnic and its author Iori Miyazawa are also the source of the yuri of absense memes and Miyazawan yuri, which are great jokes but also genuinely good concepts that I believe will alter the yuri genre in years to come. Miyazawa is an amazing author whose writing contains depth and intricacy, leading to endless analysis.

The fandom is small but on the whole very wholesome and friendly, and they have good memes and discussions.

Otherside Picnic also has some genuinely spooky horror elements and vivid imagery in the manga including body horror, so readers beware.

Conclusion: Read Otherside Picnic.

[botchbehemoth]

see the funny thing about the Abstract Miyazawan Yuri meme is that he says all that stuff in the interview. but then you read otherside picnic and find out how incredibly blatant and unsubtle it actually is

[molsno]

"miyazawan yuri is just yuribait" mfers when they find out miyazawa wrote nearly 20 pages of freaky kinky lesbian sex:

[flowergirlmiwa]