Mostly posted since quite a few folks here may be more learned that me about yuri (hey, Andrea ^^).... hey, is there a Yaoi FAQ? I'd be surprised if there wasn't... Feel free to add anything that's important that I may have missed. Maybe I'll put this one someone's webpage when I'm done. ^^ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S YURI? 'Yuri' is a term that is Japanese for the word 'lily'. The flower has become a symbol of love between two women, and is often used in artistic depictions (along with conventional cherry blossoms and rose petals). It's counterpart is 'Yaoi'. Yuri usually implies a more sexual relationship, while 'Shoujo Ai' (girl love) is a general romance and deep love. Unlike Yaoi, which is a acronym, Yuri is an actual word, as well as a girl's name. Thus it's very hard to find information on it without running into dead-ends. While homosexuality is explored a lot in anime, it reaches an odd impasse of a looser depiction of Japanese society with holdovers of traditional and 'comfy' rules. In yuri, as in yaoi, characters tend to fall into the masculine/feminine set-up. One character stereotypically is very male looking, wears exclusively boy's clothes, or uses male pronouns, or is into sports, etc. Other premises include Energetic/Quiet, Happy/Angsty, Naive/Jaded and Childish/Mature, and polar personalities dominate. TYPES Yuribait: Generic term for any girl who is often placed in a yuri pairing by fans. Canon: Self-explanatory. Characters who are outright declared yuri girls, by their own/author's words or extremely blatant actions. Huntress: Strong and confident personality are more important in spotting her than her appearance. Aggressive in her interests and pursuits, they often like cute innocent naive girls. Sometimes villainous, diabolical or otherwise overdramatic about her pose-inducing brilliance. Sultry, beautiful and passionate, she's often bisexual or outright gay. If anyone's getting laid in a series, it's her. B-ko (Project A-ko), Juri (Utena), Solude (Maze), Nova (Magic Knight Rayearth) Genki Yuri Fan girl: A character (usually younger) who idolizes another girl as a role model. Sometimes a humorous hyper-genki ditz. She's distinguished from a normal fan girl in that she often declares her love dramatically in unwelcome and embarrassing situations, or gets extremely jealous when folks act touchy-feely with the object of her affection. Sometimes the character is sophisticated/confident instead of hyper-genki, often idolizing an older classmate, instructor or boss. They may use peculiar honorifics (Friendly and respectful ones included) to refer to this elder. Wakaba (Utena), Princess Mil (Maze) Yuri magnet: A character who may or may not be a yuri girl who somehow draws all kinds of fangirls to herself, often unintentionally with an almost mystical charisma. Hikaru (Magic Knight Rayearth), Maze-chan (Maze) Embittered: Post-traumatic victims of romantic angst. They usually abhor romance or are unfriendly/cold because of a tragic past romance. In rare situations, a new love brings them out of this rut. Juri (Utena) Puppeteer: Yuri girl who often uses someone else's affections to control manipulate another into doing things for them. Often sees the other mostly as an amusement or sexual object. Sometimes a Huntress. In the Yuri fan base where angst is quite prevalent, these types are sometimes hated with a traitorous vengeance. ~_^ Shinori (Utena) Unrequited Angster Most common. One girl is in love with her friend (usually long-time)...but it's obvious that the other "doesn't feel that way." It is usually mandatory that the target of the affections has no clue of this, no matter how painfully obvious. Exacerbating the situation is how the target of the affections is usually in a Cosmic Relationship. (See, Cosmic Relationship) Glamour Butch: More a variation that a type. In lots of anime, particularly shoujo, any character, male or female, who is _very_ attractive is usually delicately beautiful. Hence even varying degrees of 'butch' characters are beautifully handsome/androgynous. Haruka (Sailor Moon) Pervert Girl: Found in humorous stories, she's bubbly, cheerful, and ecchi. Often glomps random cute girls. Alliele (El Hazard) Shrinking Lily: A Shrinking Violet. A meek girl who is too shy to declare her love, or one who is simply content to see her love object happy regardless of her own personal feelings. Tomoyo (Card Captor Sakura) Rough Girl: Almost synonymous with tomboy. A rough girl is a character who is indelicate in some form or another. She may eat or drink a lot or be a slight freeloader. While not the smartest character, she's usually not stupid. She often has stereotypically unfeminine qualities, such as being very tall or very strong or having a small chest. Sometimes they're self-conscious about it and try to become more feminine. (Though ironically, they tend to be very pretty anyway.) Conversely, a Rough Girl may be buxom and shapely and teasing. She may flirt with other characters. Since they often break many culture stereotypes, they are popular with American audiences. They also tend to get looked over romantically unless the plot specifically calls for it. In Yuri, they often get paired with delicate, quiet girls. FALSE ALARMS & OTHER THINGS TO KNOW Anime Enhancement Syndrome: Anime has a tendency to exaggerate personalities that existed in the manga they originated from. This includes making some yuri girls more 'butch' than their original counterparts or outright making characters gay when it wasn't suggested before. Mahou Shoujo Males: Yuri tends to be very prevalent in mahou shoujo anime because most of the cast tends to be _female_, with only a few males here and there. They make deep motional friendship/bonds with each other, so it's a short jump to contriving yuri. Conversely, males tend to be rather unimportant to plot and daily storytelling in the long run, and may be rarely seen or underwritten. One humorous play on consists of heterosexual girls getting infatuated with androgynous characters. While _sometimes_ genuine, this is often used for humorous intent, especially in shoujo. Japanese girls put a big separation on idol-worship and actual love/passion. Androgynous characters often have mature qualities that the girl admires, and has a handsomeness they like. However, this is NOT always to be confused with actual passion, since the boyish looks may be used as a 'substitute'. Usually the girl gets a bad reaction when reminded their idol is a woman. If it's a true like, the girl mentioning she realizes the person is a woman yet likes her anyway is a good sign of validity. (A similar example can be found when male heterosexual characters get crushes on feminine-looking male cross dressers, though apparently they don't make the separation as much and get edgy afterwards.) Cosmic Destiny: Popularized in fantasy mahou shoujo. A geas which declares 2 characters are destined to be together romantically. This is disliked by a number of people. Sometimes the two characters are little more than acquaintances until they are informed in some Dramatic Fashion that they a destined to be together. This sometimes leads to a contrived spontaneous discovery of deep love for someone they hardly know. While this could be easily fixed later on by having the 2 characters interact more with a get-to-know-you deal, it's often simply looked over as they move on to being lovey-dovey. This setup is often the cause of many alternative fan pairings, including yuri ones. Another annoying facet of this is that since males in mahou shoujo are sometimes underwritten or ineffectual in Actual Plot, the relationship often doesn't seem very deep during the non-Dramatic Plot scenes. Character who declare they 'don't like boys' are not yuri girls. The phrase is used by girls who are annoyed at the immaturity of young boys. Phrases like 'Don't like men' or 'Don't prefer men' are more telling. Hot Lesbo Sex: Happens more often in fanfic or porn doujins but traces of the "HLS" attitude exist in anime as well. And there are definitely levels of the HLS attitude. The most common is "porn sex" where two girls have sex more for the excitement of the viewer/reader. It's usually rather clear that both girls "are just letting of steam and would prefer to be with guys." Meaning that there would be no hard feelings at all if a guy claimed one or both of them. F/F couples have often been defined as "not as important" or "not really sex" (Many lemons aka "anime sex fics" have a female partner being careful not to tear the hymen because she wants "to stay a virgin until her first guy".) This is NOT yuri. ------------------------------------------------------------- "Wow, your powers are amazing... hmm, well, I should head to the grocery store now..." - Keiichi Morisato, Oh My Goddess! OAV #1 ICQ# 53439891