For me it's not really a trope but a character type where the girl is portrayed as a playful, borderline trolling flirt that doesn't take her own words or actions seriously to the point where the person whose reactions she is playing off looks like an idiot for not ignoring the said character. Like, I get the appeal of writing such a character and don't judge the authors for it but to me there is no merit to it if the playfulness is not offset with at least a dash of showing that this trolling character actually cares for the potential love interest.
I don't know if I explained it well but it has been bothering me for a while now because I don't think such characters actually add anything substantial to the story.

I'd say the Mysterious Ex from the Past. Second place goes to that situation where one of them sees the other with a third party and immediately develops the unshakeable suspicion that it's another lover.

Probably the "guy who the mc is interested in/dating/married to is actually a jerk". Like, not every man to appear in a yuri work has to be a inconsiderate, forceful, or even abusive. They could actually be decent human beings, you know.

I don't really have too much a problem with it unless it's done to a comical extreme, but it is annoying how seemingly 90% of males in Yuri exist solely to be an antagonistic force.

Like, I wish more would be like Bloom Into You or Tamen De Gushi and have male characters that are actually characters rather than just a source of drama.

Some of the yuri-specific ones I mostly dislike but they’re so ingrained as to be like annoying old friends: such as: “But we’re both girls!”

I am for some reason partial to a couple of old chestnuts: “She’s so close—her lashes are so long!”

Also, (in an appropriately wholesomely lewd context): “We’ve just started and you’re already like this!”

Romance in general, echoing Nevri: misunderstandings that only happen because the person’s blurted-out explanation needs one more sentence, or just a specific noun or two, so instead of just, “It’s not what it looks like!” add: “She’s my sister!” or “My brother’s girlfriend!” or whatever. Also hate: the other person running away before the explanation is complete.

Another version: the partially overheard conversation where the overhearer leaves before the person finishes (aka “The Wuthering Heights Eavesdrop.”

Pretty much even the oldest, most well-used tropes can work if done well, with plenty of appropriate set-up and character motivation, but too often the tropes don’t grow out of those things but are the substitute for them.

(Not much of a fan of the sudden terminal illness/previously unknown very sick childhood friend trope either.)

last edited at Jan 8, 2022 6:17PM

Some of the yuri-specific ones I mostly dislike but they’re so ingrained as to be like annoying old friends: such as: “But we’re both girls!”

^ This.

I am for some reason partial to a couple of old chestnuts: “She’s so close—her lashes are so long!”

I see what you did there. (I know, there are so many more examples...)

Romance in general, echoing Nevri: misunderstandings that only happen because the person’s blurted-out explanation needs one more sentence, or just a specific noun or two, so instead of just, “It’s not what it looks like!” add: “She’s my sister!” or “My brother’s girlfriend!” or whatever. Also hate: the other person running away before the explanation is complete.

"Lack of communication"/"Miscommunication" is a huge driving factor in romantic dramas in general, and I don't mind if those things are cleared up "in due time". Bloom Into You did that right IMO, because aside from major plot and character development hangups people actually talked to each other and resolved (or at least addressed) most of the conflicts within a chapter or two.
How Do We Relationship? / So, Do You Want To Go Out, Or? kept on dragging this aspect out endlessly, to the point where, despite the fantastic SAD translation, reading it felt a bit like a chore and I'm not even all that mad that they probably dropped it. The first 31 chapters at least felt more like How not to relationship than "How do we relationship".

It may not really be Yuri-specific but "conveniently inconvenient events" can also get old. Can't Defy The Lonely Girl kinda took that one farther than it should have.

Probably more associated with Yuri and also well exemplified in Can't Defy The Lonely Girl is sudden parental intervention after long periods of disinterest and/or neglect. Poof, Mom's arrived to ruin our lovely confession.

I tend to avoid historical stories or based on real historical period of time, I'm not sure how to explain it but it feels like I can't connect with dead people lo/

Somehow connected, I don't like stories with nobleness families or Queens and Princesses, those only happen during their youth, but because they are "good" nobles that live for their nation and people, YOU KNOW they will be married off eventually to some guy, it's rare to see one of them just leave their family behind and be happy somewhere else... I felt that way specially after watching Manaria Friends, you know they love each others and are soulmates but they have a "duty" to play and eventually each of them will go back to their families to fulfill it.

And this is specially bad because that only applies with yuri, if they were a het couple they will just married off anyway and it will be romantic and expected.

The romantic ships where one of the girls is madly in love and does aaaaaaaaaaaalllllllll the work, plans the dates, tries to approach, does the bentos, follows around and the other girl is like -_- 99% of the times but keeps the other hanging in safe distance, if such distance is crossed even 1ml the response is violent.

Such stories always end like (after 20 or 50 chapters with something like) "well.... I don't hate you, I guess -_-" go fuck yourself.

Death flags in the title or synopsis are a big NO, something with an illness or zombies is BANNED in my list lo/

Similar but not quite the same are stories with time travel problems, supernatural beings or spirits, most of those are like fairies, ghost or angels that are stuck with the protagonist for a reason or curse, but they will eventually move on or go back to their world when that's solved.

Aaaand to end this, maybe characters that are too cool or smug without flags, because no matter what they do, it will work out but if the protagonist tries the same it fails and suffers and it's "hilarious".

wow that's a lot, huh ?

"Can't Defy The Lonely Girl" has too many bad tropes lo/

last edited at Jan 8, 2022 8:19PM

Personally I've never minded the "but we're both girls" as a trope. Because all it really is at the end of the day is the girl questioning her sexuality and I think that can be very nice if written well. Though it rarely is.

I don't know how to phrase it, but I dislike the "girls love is innocent and pure" kind of trope. Like, stuff that consists of typically young girls who are "in love with love" and date other girls (usually because the setting doesn't have any men, and also (more implied but still there) to keep the girls "pure"). Very common in older yuri and class S but not done much these days

Some of the yuri-specific ones I mostly dislike but they’re so ingrained as to be like annoying old friends: such as: “But we’re both girls!”

^ This.

I am for some reason partial to a couple of old chestnuts: “She’s so close—her lashes are so long!”

I see what you did there. (I know, there are so many more

Alternate version: “She smells so good/her lips/breasts are so soft!”

Romance in general, echoing Nevri: misunderstandings that only happen because the person’s blurted-out explanation needs one more sentence, or just a specific noun or two, so instead of just, “It’s not what it looks like!” add: “She’s my sister!” or “My brother’s girlfriend!” or whatever. Also hate: the other person running away before the explanation is complete.

"Lack of communication"/"Miscommunication" is a huge driving factor in romantic dramas in general, and I don't mind if those things are cleared up "in due time".

I think I’d say I’m more annoyed by the lame causes of the misunderstandings than the mechanics of their resolution, although certainly they can drag on to preposterous lengths. And sometimes miscommunications can happen when characters have legitimate reasons for not saying what really needs to be said. However, the case where one character says, “You must be feeling/worried about [X]”, which is incorrect, but the other character lets it stand when there’s no reason not to clarify: not OK.

Bloom Into You did that right IMO, because aside from major plot and character development hangups people actually talked to each other and resolved (or at least addressed) most of the conflicts within a chapter or two.

That’s a good example (like so many from that superb series) of what I mean by the tropes arising from the plot and character development rather than simply being inserted into the story.

That is, when Yuu heard Touko’s reply to her confession, she had no way of knowing that Touko had just had a sudden epiphany about how unfairly she had been treating Yuu’s emotions, and that Touko’s “I’m sorry,” was not simply the traditional confession-rejection phrase. And furthermore, Touko’s failure to rush after Yuu was a function of realizing that she could not return Yuu’s feelings at that point. Too often the decision whether or not to run after the fleeing person to clarify the situation seems to only hinge on whether the plot needs more padding or not.

And you’re right—“convenient inconveniences” are indeed annoying. I abandoned one long-runner shounen series recently (Kimi no Iru Machi) when it seemed like the entire cast took turns lingering around unlikely places (such as the love hotel district) in order to catch other characters in the act of “It’s not what it looks like!” (An MC permanently glued to the Idiot Ball didn’t help either.)

• "But we're both girls." in modern settings and sometimes even if not, and if it becomes a big deal or is expressed and then quickly resolved with "gender doesn't matter". Adding on to that, when the story acts like the character(s) are person-sexual.
• "It's easier to be friends because we're both girls."
• Cliche progression of sex in NSFW works which doesn't take the characters' personalities or their relationship into account. (That is a general problem of hentai, to be fair.)
• Enormously oversized breasts, butts, etc. (also a more general problem of sexualization and slightly personal preference related)
• More masculine presenting girls being the prince of the school or whatever, with girls fawning over them.
• Not enough works depicting the potential and actual consequences of being gay.
• School setting. Like no real fantasy settings. Isekai doesn't count.
• Main characters usually being each other's first crush/loves, which is why they have that "we're both girls" realization be part of the story in the first place. Or one character only having that one ex who didn't actually leave any real character impact on them and is only there for drama.

Maybe not my least favourite but I kinda dislike it when one of the protagonists is portrayed as being overly pathetic, or at least having a really low self esteem where they don't really see themselves as good in any way, and then somebody way out of their league starts showing interest in them and they're all like "why do they like me I'm trash". Strikes me as being a bit too much of a fantasy aimed at people with similarly low self-image I think, that some cool beautiful person will swoop down on their white horse and save them from their boring life without them having done anything to earn it. I personally believe that if you want to write a good romance, the audience has to "fall in love" with the romantic leads to an extent, they have to be likeable enough that you easily understand why the characters like each-other. So if I don't like one of the characters in a romance, I think it breaks my investment in the story as I'm just like "why are you interested in this loser".

This may sound very close-minded of me and I will accept that it is merely my personal preference that does not have to apply to anyone else, but... I am so very tired of the trope that a lesbian doesnt know she is into women until she is in her late twenties onward and slept around with dozens of men always not getting she is not into them. I know that this does happen in real life and that internalized homophobia and heteronormativity cause such misfortune, but in a lot of stories it is not even treated like that's the cause.

Most girls will understand their sexuality after one or two mistakes at most, if not before those ever happen. I dont like when it is exacerbated for the sake of making the story seem more "mature" or giving the "relief" of the woman finally finding her happiness with a woman. The 10 years of throwing herself at guys was not necessary for that, thanks.

PS: This is not an issue if the protagonist/love interest is bisexual. Of course I prefer if they are happy with a woman, but I won't feel bad when a bisexual woman is male leaning.

Secondly, and this is far worse as a trope, but also rarer... the idea that a lesbian sleeps with/dates her crush's male love interest to drive them apart or """protect""" her. It sickens me to the point that I have to immediately close the story.

Well from yuri specific ones I can think of rn (still it's not exclusive to yuri I guess) is the "Characters need to be separated for X years for whatever reasons". Majority of the time it comes out of nowhere and feels incredibly forced, because it only exist to increase tension and drama for finale of the series. I don't think I ever saw it done well and even if, it always feels bad.

I fully understand this criticism. The utter waste of lifespan that is committed to in some manga for the most trivial reasons is infuriating to me. Many authors pull this card merely for the sake of making the story "bittersweet" or more "profound", but to me that is nothing but forced. There have been (a few) examples where a long separation made sense and was justified and those do hit very hard, but it is incredibly rare.

To add to that point, it is ten times worse when the partners drop all contact with each other alltogether. I will never understand this idea that people cannot call each other long distance or stay in contact. I suppose it would take away from the "tearful reunion after years of separation" if those two girls actually, you know, still heard from each other every day. That doesn't make it more bearable though.

It is the absolute most unforgivable when two characters had a minor misunderstanding and just split up, only to resolve this issue by "chance" years later.

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 5:20AM

Not really an individual trope, but I dislike the Yuri Story A ("There is a girl, she likes another girl. The other girl likes her. They like each other. The end."). I can see its appeal on a theoretical level, but IMO it is a lazy cop-out by authors who want to draw cute girls being cute together (or porn) without actually coming up with a story. I dislike forced drama as much as the next bloke, but a little bit of character conflict is required in any romance fiction, otherwise the story has no arc, no spice, and no emotional value.

Probably the "guy who the mc is interested in/dating/married to is actually a jerk". Like, not every man to appear in a yuri work has to be a inconsiderate, forceful, or even abusive. They could actually be decent human beings, you know.

Word.

Not really an individual trope, but I dislike the Yuri Story A ("There is a girl, she likes another girl. The other girl likes her. They like each other. The end."). I can see its appeal on a theoretical level, but IMO it is a lazy cop-out by authors who want to draw cute girls being cute together (or porn) without actually coming up with a story. I dislike forced drama as much as the next bloke, but a little bit of character conflict is required in any romance fiction, otherwise the story has no arc, no spice, and no emotional value.

Quite the informative article you linked there, thanks. It's kind of amazing to think that the tall beauty with long black hair and shorter cheerful (airheaded) blonde dynamic has survived for decades after its first appearance. Thankfully, recent yuri manga seem to have somewhat diverted from this trope, though it's still quite common for at least one of the main leads to fall into these categories.

And totally agree with what you say here. I can't even count how many yuri manga (and especially one-shots from the 2010's) I've read that aren't much —if anything— more than the Yuri Story A. At least with one-shots the recognition of mutual affection comes within thirty pages instead of thirty chapters lol

Predatory behavior excused (explicitly or implicitly) because "it's fine, we're both girls".

For most others it's more general tropes than anything specific to yuri. Like stupid misunderstandings, endless highschool manga, the same types of characters over and over again, alcohol amnesia ...

... also, as a "meta-trope", the entire handholding stuff. Sheer cringe at this point.

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 5:15AM

The 404 Straight People Not Found trope where the other regular characters turn out to be gay as well.

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 5:32AM

The 404 Straight People Not Found trope where the other regular characters turn out to be gay as well.

That's the sort of thing that I personally don't mind sometimes, but other times when some show or whatever has too many queer characters it just kinda takes me out of it. I guess there's some sort of filter in my brain that sort of mentally classes things as a "gay media" or not, and when there's too many gays in something my subconscious considers "non-gay media" I start asking questions about what chemicals they're putting in the water. I dunno, that's probably a terrible way of explaining it.

I’ll repeat that I think even the most heinously overused tropes can be used to excellent effect if done right. There just aren’t too many creators in any field who can deploy worn-out tropes at a high level rather than using them as narrative or thematic crutches.

I’d make an analogy to popular music—although there’s a tremendous amount of diversity of themes and genres, there’s still that solid core of songs about two people (probably still most often het and implicitly fairly young) getting together, breaking up, getting back together, looking back in anger or sadness, etc., and changes to media forms tend to occur at a glacial pace.

(The Beatles recorded Revolver the same year that Frank Sinatra had a hit with “Strangers in the Night.”)

And the theme of first love in a high school without males or homophobia makes for a pretty clean slate for a songwriter yuri mangaka to work with.

The 404 Straight People Not Found trope where the other regular characters turn out to be gay as well.
clearly lesbian version of wish fulfillment

Vehement disagree. Does wanting to be equal really count as "wish fulfillment"? I've had more than enough homophobia in reality; hell if I want to spend my recreational time seeing more of it. Just because reality sucks doesn't mean fiction for gay people has to suck too. Gay people being a minority isn't some fundamentally important aspect of homosexuality that needs to exist in other worlds.

And it's like, you could write a story, and if it's heterosexual it's fine, but if you write the exact same story with genderswapped characters so that everyone's gay - now it's tropey, bad writing, and lesbian wish fulfillment? I don't think I've ever disagreed with a take about yuri so hard in my life. Gay people should be able to enjoy romance the same way hets can, with no strings attached to how it "should" be written just because the characters are gay.

856600 posted:

The 404 Straight People Not Found trope where the other regular characters turn out to be gay as well.
clearly lesbian version of wish fulfillment

Vehement disagree. Does wanting to be equal really count as "wish fulfillment"? I've had more than enough homophobia in reality; hell if I want to spend my recreational time seeing more of it. Just because reality sucks doesn't mean fiction for gay people has to suck too. Gay people being a minority isn't some fundamentally important aspect of homosexuality that needs to exist in other worlds.

I would take a different tack, actually. Manga doesn't do this, I assume because the culture isn't that similar in this regard. However, I can tell you the vast majority of close relationships I have are with other LGBT people. High tendency towards women, too. This isn't some grand coincidence - my sexuality has played a huge role in my life, having lead me here and pushed me into hobbies where I have a high probability of meeting other people superficially like me. Any story about me would be infinitely likely to feature an "unrealistic" amount of gay people. I've never heard of my experience being hugely abnormal, so I can't see the trope itself being terribly "unrealistic," even if yuri often portrays it as mere happenstance.

But then I also love "b-b-b-but we're both girls!" in manga, so maybe this is just boomer life.

The topic of whether everyone (relevant) in a story being gay is good or bad by default is a bit pointless, because it actually highly depends on the tone and setting. The degree of realism a story dabbles in varies and sometimes even overall grounded stories choose to not be grounded in aspects that matter to it.

Setting: A normal modern high school will on average have only very few lesbians, more in all-girls schools than in co-ed ones at least, though. On the other hand some sci-fi or fantasy world may have completely different standards, so being against "overrepresentation" by default is not useful when you want to go for different kinds of settings in fiction. Even modern settings could be worlds similar to our own that have 10% homosexuals instead of 3%. I think this criticism is clearly limited to stories that are set in a perfect mirror of our real world, which already makes the trope criticism overly specific.

Tone: A comedic story will distort whatever it wants with the innate pre-conception that the reader can suspend their disbelief. But this does not only apply to comedies, even grounded stories have things that are not realistic for the sake of its plot and tone. A slice of life story that wants to tell stories about lesbian romance will have lesbian characters be the focus. It can be completely realistic in every aspect, from artstyle to emotional drama, to setting and psychology, but it will take a liberty of probability to suit its set-up. This is normal for any type of fiction.

Some writers circumvent the strain of your suspension of disbelief by making clear that the only reason the reader perceives this world as one with an overabundance of gays is that the focus of the "camera" is on them. We all acknowledge that for children to exist, parents must too. This means for every single gay character there are two heterosexual(or bisexual) characters behind them. Similarily in a school setting you can very well assume every single person not shown is het. Every background girl, unless specified otherwise, is het. The convenience of the plot is not that there are too many gays, it's that the gays overwhelmingly interact with each other. Yet that is something that does legitimately happen in the real world. Similar people attract each other.

If it truly bothers someone that lesbians are drawn to each other like Stand users in Jojo, then that is their right of course, but it seems that hating on such a basic story device is awfully... limiting. Similar to having a sports manga full of people who have an interest in that specific sport is done for the sake of logistics (and believe me, nobody in my school ever cared about mountain biking, despite what the absolutely real new summer sports anime MOUNT!!! will tell you with its 7 mountain biker pros in the same class). Unless different sexualities are a direct factor to the story, why bother including them like you are trying to fulfill a nebulous het quota?
At least that's how I see it.

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 2:26PM

Some writers circumvent the strain of your suspension of disbelief by making clear that the only reason the reader perceives this world as one with an overabundance of gays is that the focus of the "camera" is on them. We all acknowledge that for children to exist, parents must too. This means for every single gay character there are two heterosexual(or bisexual) characters behind them. Similarily in a school setting you can very well assume every single person not shown is het. Every background girl, unless specified otherwise, is het. The convenience of the plot is not that there are too many gays, it's that the gays overwhelmingly interact with each other.

This is what I was getting at about writers using the first-love/high-school template as a relatively blank slate (or maybe the analogy of "clearing the decks" would work). Think how many manga storyworlds, especially short ones, don't even have parents around (with or without the "always working" explanation), or schools that seem to be almost entirely free of teachers, (to say nothing of sporadically staffed infirmaries available for yuri trysts).

In fact the curriculum of some Japanese high schools seems to consist of students moving between classes without any actual classes, and studying for tests and getting them back without actually taking them (on-panel, anyway).

And staying behind after club activities, of course. For more trysts.

OrangePekoe: > But then I also love "b-b-b-but we're both girls!" in manga, so maybe this is just boomer life.

Don't get me wrong--in isolation, as an old yuri-idiom friend it tickles me to death; it's when it operates as a plot-extending block to the romance that I object to it.

(I've hardly read any yaoi at all--is "But we're both guys" a thing in that genre too?)

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 3:05PM

@Blastaar
Mhm, I suppose the mark of a good writer is how well they can trim every superfluous element from their story, rather than finding ways to perfectly replicate every aspect of life that the reader will experience on the daily themselves. Realism on need-to-show basis.

Incidentally one of my favorite yuri manga of all time is AnoKiss (A kiss and a white lily for her dearest girl), a story which revels in the exact trope in question. I would even go so far as to say it is one of the worst "offenders" I've ever seen as the all-girls school in question may as well be rebranded as the all-sapphic academy. But nobody I have ever talked to about it found issue with the fact that, indeed, every girl with even a single panel of screentime is a clam connoisseur.

And I am certain this is because sexuality is actually almost a non-factor to the couples, believe it or not. They struggle, worry and deal with real issues, but all of them are unrelated to being lesbian. Whether it be demanding parents, academic scores, future aspirations, polyamory, a rekindling of an old flame or simply being too tsundere for their own good (yes this is a real issue too I am sure). Realism is not about perfectly recreating reality, but about being relatable to the reader's reality to a degree. And as opposed to what I often read in comments sections, I do not need to relate to every aspect of a character to find them relatable. I can relate to their struggles even if they dont also struggle with other things that happen to me, lest I would demand every manga include a traumatic dentist scene at least once.

last edited at Jan 9, 2022 4:00PM

Licentious Lantern posted:

And I am certain this is because sexuality is actually almost a non-factoer to the couples, believe it or not. They struggle, worry and deal with real issues, but all of them are unrelated to being lesbian.

I noticed that is actually something that can make it less of a issue for me. When majority of drama arises from "b-but we're both girls" or in general is related to being gay, then having everyone in the story be lesbians bothers me, but when characters being gay for each other is treated as matter of fact and their problems come from other things, then I no longer pay as much attention to it. As I said before, I wish we would get more stories like that, because it's great way to normalize homosexuality and make it feel like something natural and common.

• Not enough works depicting the potential and actual consequences of being gay.

Sorry, but what do you mean by it exactly? I think we got plenty of stories depicting homophobia and characters being bullied/dealing with prejudice over it?

imo this is an issue that partially arises from the typical setting (highschool, so consequences necessarily must be somewhat limited) and the author's usage of the (usually male) antagonist/villain-style of homophobia; effectively, you got someone in the story (perhaps a tyrannical father, or an asshole ex-/would-be boyfriend) and they must overcome/"defeat" them and then once that happens it's at least implied everything's fine now.

But that's not the same as a portrayal of pervasive homophobia; that's not "over" once you've "got your girl", you can't just "defeat" some homophobe and then you're good for the rest of your life. And I would say that manga ... I'd almost say never go into the nitty-gritty of what that truly means - especially in Japanese society, especially if we also talk about sexism and whatnot on top. For example, in work, and socializing around work, and career. Or in renting or buying property, or sharing medical costs, or having say in medical decisions of your partner. Or the political atmosphere within the country, perhaps things like small town communities vs big cities; different generations of Japanese, who knows. Anything of that sort.

It's really only "this guy is in the way and now they aren't so great! Yay!" Maybe there's some joke about getting married abroad. And that's fine of course and it can also be fine to have stories where everything's always great but I would agree that some more real nitty-gritty manga would be interesting. Something like Ikoku Nikki but (more) gay, and at least as my memory goes there's nothing (and also, because that might be suspected, Ikoku Nikki isn't bleak. This wouldn't have to be a bleak story either. Just a different one).