Not sure if a forum about Girls' love is the best out of all places inside and outside the internet to seek truth about Politics - - a subject the greatest thinkers have been pondering ever since mankind existed and which has yet to be solved.

While I understand that some people might find political discussions exhausting, I also can't abide the idea of discussions on a forum dedicated to yuri being apolitical. The history of the genre is steeped in politics- if Nobuko Yoshiya didn't take it upon herself to write feminist literature about lesbians at a time when the treatment of women in general and lesbians in particular was terrible, the genre wouldn't exist in its current form. To say that yuri ought to be apolitical is like saying that cyberpunk or a period drama should be apolitical- the very existence of lesbian media in societies that are still largely heteronormative is an act of sociopolitical subversion. And this isn't just me being pedantic about the genre- many of the people who consume yuri are queer themselves, and live in societies that don't acknowledge or respect them- a fact that's reflected in the demographics of this site's userbase. These people could never afford to take politics lightly- not when their very existence is turned into a political issue and contested at every level, regardless of how deeply they want to lead normal lives. Engaging in political discourse is the only way they could justify their existence and contextualize their experiences, and denying them of the opportunity to provide that context is akin to sealing their right to expression.

I've noticed a rising trend in discussions on this site where users who try to take a critical stance or bring in sociopolitical context and tie fiction to real-world developments are insulted and targeted, with people telling them not to read too deeply into things or 'make this political'. The story about the mistress, for instance, struck a nerve amongst a lot of people who've dealt with manipulative employers, and to say that they should just shut up and not express their dislike for the idea feels restrictive. It's uncomfortably similar to forums that bully trans or gay folks for talking about their experiences, which could just as easily be classified as 'political'. I can understand subjectivity or people not wanting to face negativity, but surely there's better ways to express that than gagging every critical viewpoint. It feels akin to saying, "I want to consume my fantasy content, and your attempts to bring in real-world context are interfering with that consumption, so shut up." For many people, those 'political' takes are closely connected to their identities and the way they express themselves, and they shouldn't need to bottle that up.

Ultimately, I guess it depends on what you see Dynasty as. A lot of people want it to be a forum where you read yuri, make a couple jokes, and log off. But if I wanted that, I could just search for the 'yuri' tag on MangaDex instead. What attracted me to this forum was that it felt like a community, a safe space, with more to justify its existence and history than just hosting lesbian manga. I'd read some fascinating discussions, seen some brilliant posters, and wanted to engage with them and learn something new. If you told me that Dynasty was a place where a mod might get attacked for criticizing a dictatorial government some months ago, I would've laughed at you- that seems like the kind of thing reserved for the most conservative corners of Reddit. And yet that's what I've found myself facing lately. To be honest, it's demoralizing and kind of scary. And yet, I want to believe that there's still value to be found here, still good conversations to be had about the world we live in. Perhaps that's just optimism, or forcing my expectations upon a group of strangers. But I still want to hope that expressing my opinions on this forum wasn't a mistake. So while I'll try not to get off-topic or resort to mud-slinging, I still fully intend to support those that look at yuri through a critical lens and share their experiences. I might not agree with them, but I certainly won't ask them to make things apolitical.

Sorry for the long post. It's just a bunch of impressions that've bubbled up in my head over the past few weeks.

last edited at Jan 9, 2021 3:10PM

Rest assured that I will not be engaging with posters of this kind again,

Funny, isn't that the third time this conversation that you've said that? Are you sure you don't want to engage a fourth time to continue piling on the insults?

Let me clarify.

The first time was in context of our debate, the second was in context of your views in general, and the third was not addressed directly to you, but to everyone involved in this shitshow.

There won't be any more after this point. I hope that's clear.

The discussion continued afterwards because Kirin started a debate about it before immediately saying that they would not start a debate about it. It was an attempt to get the last word in and make it so that only their viewpoint was heard.

My point was that the people who criticize the CCP are not criticizing the Chinese people- indeed, many of their criticisms come from a concern for the safety of said people. You have a problem with this, for reasons best known to yourself, enough that you're willing to drag drama out of a moderated thread and into the Café to justify your... I'm not even sure what to call it at this point.

It was fine until Alice popped in after the discussion had already reached its natural conclusion, with people actually agreeing, and unnecessarily shut down the topic by endorsing one of the sides of the argument. If she was legitimately interested in ending the discussion, it doesn't make sense to include such an incendiary comment saying that the other side is right (after, I might add, that we managed to come to agreement otherwise). That is what I was disappointed with.

What exactly is this agreement? As I recall, I backed out because you'd devolved into false equivalencies and generalizations, and the other two posters were someone who only asked one question and Throbelisk. As the post above demonstrates, he isn't exactly on board with your views. So once again, who agreed?

You can advocate your views all you want, because I have genuinely moved past giving a shit, but don't misrepresent users or moderators for your agenda. Your conduct so far has been petulant, disrespectful and dishonest. I regret saying anything about the topic now, because I hadn't believed that any self-respecting user of this forum could sink to such depths.

To everyone who's wondering what the hell's going on and the mods who've had to read through all this, I sincerely apologize. Rest assured that I will not be engaging with posters of this kind again, regardless of what they say, because no arguments I make could ever sway them from their positions.

last edited at Jan 9, 2021 11:01AM

Aw, so the 'Twintails is a fellow idol' theory got jossed. Too bad, it would've been an interesting spin. I guess she's just a regular loser now. Also, both girls constantly gushing about the minutiae of Cirno's every action is starting to get kinda grating, although it's a pretty accurate depiction of how rabid idol stans behave. I really do hope Cirno gets a focus chapter soon and isn't just used as a plot device.

The father being abused and smacked around by his old man, conforming out of fear, and then tossing back beers with him while chatting about how stupid kids are these days is an uncomfortably realistic stuff. I've seen so many bigoted, pseudo-gruff, wannabe badass dudes going, "Kids are so soft these days, my dad kicked me in the head once a day and I turned out fine.", and they're this close to realizing that there's a cycle of abuse, but admitting it would be to indict the toxic way of life they've been taught to lead. At middle-age, they can't deal with the realization that they might be a part of a rotten system, and rather than trying to make productive changes in the present, they just try and pull their own kids into the same binaries to 'justify' their own suffering. It's not that it was 'normal' at the time- kids feel like shit when you smack 'em around regardless of the period or culture. And the more they speak out, the harder they get kicked down. Here's hoping that Mogumo can reach out to any dregs of empathy left within their father, and make him realize that they're not so different, and can both try to heal and improve.

last edited at Jan 8, 2021 10:49PM

Gravity is nothing against the power of handholding and sparkles.

It's a dog eat-out dog world.

Wow, I can't believe Touko and You broke into the Euphonium universe to make KumiRei canon.

Third-degree burns are the best way to bring the spark back to your relationship.

"Go to the church, they said. It'll suppress your blooming infatuation with women, they said." - Riesbyfe Stridberg in a gay bar somewhere.

^ Can confirm, mushroom omelettes are excellent.

Important Sage negotiations.

Just another day in Chensokyo.

The world needs magnitudes more FutaKao. They've got such a complex, multifaceted relationship. Kaoruko was pretty intense here, which I liked. The doujin was probably written a while ago, but it hits even better when you factor in all the delicious character development our bratty princess is currently getting in Re Live.

^ Interesting. No matter how old or young you are, the Internet's full of surprises.

May I ask how y'all are locating these sites? Genuinely curious.

"Till death bring us together, and lead to much making out."

Kinda feel bad for the first guy.

I can't help but feel like he's gonna come back as a very pissed final boss, especially since this is a time travel tale.

^ I could link multiple articles about how the Chinese government has in fact banned and censored queer content, but you'd probably find some way to dismiss that as 'fanfiction' too, because the people intelligent enough to do their research and grasp context will do so on their own, and those that cannot will strive to win arguments on discussion forums based on pedantic arguments that take laughably simple views of the the world. I suppose it's easier to live life taking everything at face value, so I'm not about to complicate yours any further. Have a nice day.

last edited at Jan 8, 2021 4:15AM

Well, this is a pleasant surprise. This story takes place in a very detailed world with a fairly complex system of magic and religion, so there's a lot more to like than just the yuri, but the manga unfortunately cuts some of the context out. There's a translation on Wordpress that's pretty good, but I think it stopped at Chapter 1 back in November.

Yes, but they did publicly make a post about their publisher interfering and their desire to defy the publisher, which is not what somebody being censored by the government would do. On top of this, the artists posting actual pornography before the crackdown deleted their posts -- if the author was afoul of the government for this non-pornographic material, you'd expect them to take their posts down, not make it slightly less yuri.

Taking on a publisher with a bad reputation definitely isn't the same as taking on a dictatorial government. And making the work 'less yuri' could reflect an attachment to the work and a desire to keep producing it, even in a diluted form, rather than outright deleting something they've worked for years to create. People don't operate on a binary between bootlicking and revolution- most strive to toe the line and say as much as they can get away with. It depends on whether you're willing to accept the 'public' version in a nation riddled by censorship or read between the lines. The latter approach doesn't guarantee that you'll be right, but it also doesn't make you a delusional conspiracy theorist.

To be honest, this allegation has absolutely zero credibility. It relies on your base instinct to automatically assume "China bad" whenever anybody writes anything about China, and otherwise there is no reason to believe that it is true.

It's not 'China bad' so much as 'Chinese government bad', which is hardly a flawed assumption to make. I'm not starting a debate about this because it'll inevitably spiral out of control and get shut down, but you really should try to think more about the circumstances in which these works are published and all the factors at play.

Joking aside I'm always a bit...conflicted (?) about genderbender like this. It's been an interest and fantasy for a long time, yet I do not really count myself as trans or anything like it really. Makes me feel like I'm stepping on peoples toes by enjoying something for a more shallow reason.

It's fine to enjoy something even if you're not part of the target demographic or the group being portrayed- indeed, one of the ways global awareness about queer media and narratives spreads is via supportive allies. The LGBT movement was always based in solidarity, acceptance and inclusion, and in the hopes that those who weren't recognized or accepted by society could come together and acknowledge each other's stories. You can enjoy a lesbian story if you're straight, or a nonbinary story if you're trans, or a story about an asexual man in Russia if you're from Brazil.

The key is empathy and respect, and while certain people might certainly relate more to stories that portray their respective sexualities, that doesn't make anyone else's experience 'shallow'. Just make sure you don't end up like those weebs who read genderbender stuff for kinks and then treat actual trans folk like crap, because fetishization is pretty big issue with this genre. This also applies to a lot of authors that write genderbender, since they play the situation for jokes and end up reinforcing heteronormativity with tropes like 'turning into a girl will make you want to do guys, regardless of your original sexuality'. Thankfully, this one's a lot more wholesome, and I hope we get more content like this in the future. Enjoying something as great as this isn't shallow at all- it just means you've got good taste.

^ To be fair, it would be nearly impossible for anyone in China to publicly declare that they've been coerced by the government, owing to the high degree of surveillance on the Internet in country, particularly on platforms like Weibo. Any posts to that effect would probably get taken down in hours, and most people wouldn't even think to make one in the first place. Plus, the Chinese government has been pretty hard on online queer works for years now, with documented cases of artists being censored and fined. So I can't blame people for assuming some degree of fact-distortion, especially since this is coming from translated posts and not a complete investigation. Though 'author punished by dictatorial state for being progressive' does make for a better story than 'executive meddling', even if they're stemming from the same restrictive sociopolitical environment.

This tidbit of information has been very informative.

I would take it with a very, very large grain of salt. I've seen that rumour spread as fact constantly, but I've never seen anybody actually substantiate it. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I'm very dubious that it's true.

It's pretty hard to get a press release about this stuff, but the most accurate source seems to be this thread on Reddit that refers directly to the author's Weibo, making it more or less trustworthy. As the thread mentions, there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that's hard to figure out because of China's isolated nature and the tendency to shut down online gossip accounts. It's possible that the problem was with the publishers alone, or that their reservations reflected a greater trend wherein artists are expected to self-censor content that the government might take offense to. Either way, we can conclude that the issues with the story don't stem from purely personal reasons, and some degree of outside influence was asserted.

Edit: This article provides some more context from a general perspective, though the Facebook post explaining Tamen de Gushi's situation seems to have been taken down.

last edited at Jan 7, 2021 10:19PM

But as for the artist compromising and having to be more mainstream- does that really happen much? I mean the reason the artist is successful is surely due to what they are creating already- they obviously have a popular niche that brought them to a companies attention..

Depends on the niche and the art. Most artists that get recognized and scouted by companies would generally have fairly mainstream content and not something like guro fanart. But like you mentioned yourself, someone who writes BL or yuri doujins would get less time to do so because of their official work, which pays better and takes up a ton of time. If they're making official content for a property that has yaoi/yuri bait, then their art and stories would have to comply with that instead of giving them the freedom to interpret the relationship as they like. Many fans, even if they're not satisfied with the change in content, would probably buy it simply because of respect for the author and to support them, so there's not much of a risk of losing profits. Moreover, the corporations build the base for long-term relationships with the artists, opening the doors for future collaborations. The only people who'd get ticked off are the hardcore fans who worship the ethos and culture of fanart, which is why this story frames the issue as personal and has Aizawa feel guilty about wanting to 'monopolize' Musumi.

Why would a company make them change the succesful stuff they do that their fans want? Wouldnt it just risk thier popularity for the company? Also creators wont do their best work if ithey cant work on what they want to either?
It seems short sighted and dumb to turn a creator more generic- any creator can do generic. Wouldnt it be better to get creators that fill all niches?

There's also the issue that arises when niches get too defined. If you start off making a particular kind of fanart, get recruited by a company and hired to produce tons of it, and feel creatively exhausted after it becomes a chore, it's hard to back out or try original projects when you're on contract. Many artists are forced to endlessly replicate their greatest hits instead of trying something new, because the niche's popularity supercedes their own, forcing them to pigeonhole themselves for success rather than pursuing artistic ambitions. So you'll get artists that gain a huge following for fanart, utterly fail to gain success with original projects that don't have the fanbase of the original IP, and end up shackling themselves to that same old property so they can make enough money to get by.