Examples do not match article: Girls Love

I noticed on the Girls' Love page that a lot of the examples outside Anime are just stories about lesbians, which is decidly not the same thing (Girls' Love is a genre spawned out of, but not entirely limited to, manga). A good chunk of this really needs to be moved or deleted.

The place for lesbian films outside the genre would be Queer Romance or Queer Media depending on the type. I thought I'd bring this up in the repair shop in hopes of catching the attention of Girls' Love fans who know a bit more than I do about what does or doesn't qualify here, to avoid removing valid examples.

On a related note that's been nagging at me for some time - should Yaoi Guys be limited in a similar way? I've found some dubious wicks to it.

Could you give a specific example with that page? Boys' Love itself is pretty well contained, but I'm less sure about Yaoi Guys.

edited 13th Jun '11 8:24:21 PM by whereismytea

Bump.

*skims the tropes in question*

Agreed, Girls' Love should be a more specific subtrope, we need to move the non-manga or anime examples that don't fit to the correct supertrope or subtrope.

I think Film, Literature, and Live Action TV can all safely go, but the one I'm most wary of sorting is Webcomics, because some of them are probably legitimate examples if the author has stated such but it's hard to know which ones those are without having read them.

Maybe I'll start with move of the three aforementioned folders and work from there?

edited 23rd Jun '11 10:50:29 AM by whereismytea

The term yuri is actually used by the fandom quite a bit for non-Japanese examples. Also the word yuri (literally meaning lily) is also a Japanese slang for lesbian.

Since they're already divided on the page by medium, I don't see any confusion in the examples that were there before. Gonna put them back for now until we conclude the discussion.

edited 23rd Jun '11 1:27:09 PM by CBanana

The trope description is clearly about Girls' Love as the genre which originated out of manga and anime. Yuri may be thrown around by fans in reference to GLBT produced/marketed works, and even individual pairings within a work that is not, but that doesn't make those works Girls' Love, and these works already have a place in Queer Media and Queer Romance. The examples were ones not remotely influenced by Girls' Love as a genre, simply depictions of lesbianism in fiction, which this page is not.

Right, "Yuri" is not the Japanese term for lesbians, despite what some fans think.

Non-Japanese works that employ the tropes of Girls' Love can stay, but the vast majority of them won't.

The term "Girls Love" isn't really used anywhere besides English speaking fandom which would make it a fandom term. In that case, shouldn't we go by how most of the fandom decides it?

The current idiom of "yuri" (lily) comes from the term "yurizoku" (lily tribe) as it was used to describe the female readers of a noted gay Japanese magazine. It evolved to mean eventually be a catch-all phrase for lesbian, particularly lesbian fiction.

I don't see why we need to persist in this isolationist attitude toward tropes prevalent in Japanese media. Tropes are universal. They may originate in particular cultures or genres, but they are not "owned" by those cultures any more than you can "own" an invention like the wheel. The important part is that the example fits the trope. Where that example comes from is irrelevant.

I have a feeling that some folks are trying to use a No True Scotsman fallacy to avoid broadening their horizons.

Yup. It turns out there is a word for it in French, German, Russian, Urdu ... you get the point. Nothing special about it being something that is also done in Japanese comics.

What? A word for lesbian?

This trope isn't about general lesbian fiction, its about a specific subgenre of it.

Its not about not wanting to broaden horizons, its about just not having information about it. For a variety of reasons there is more Japanese popular culture available to an english speaking audience then there is from most other languages and cultures. If this same subgenre appears elsewhere, great! Add them. But this is not the trope for general lesbian fiction, so examples need to be checked and moved to the appropriate page if possible.

@ Fast Eddie and Fighteer: I think there might be some confusion about what this is about. Girls' Love isn't actually a trope, it's a genre of fiction that has certain tropes commonly (but obviously not exclusively) attached to it. The point of clearing off examples isn't to say "This trope is only Japanese" but to say "These are works in this genre". Basically it's an issue of things being indexed on the wrong index. And since there is an available index for the non-applicable works already, why not use it?

Also here's a wikipedia link for anyone interested in reading up on the genre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_Love.

Of course, the question is, if it's not based on the origin of the work, where is the line drawn between lesbian fiction that's "yuri" or "not yuri"?

Also, last I checked, Queer Romance is a supertrope that includes Girls' Love in it. There are no contradictions from works being listed on both pages.

edited 23rd Jun '11 4:08:01 PM by CBanana

Right, we may need to discuss broadening Girls' Love, or perhaps looking deeper into the Queer Romance genre and see if it has mores subgenres that we at the moment aren't recognizing.

Or even just better defining Girls' Love. The definition as is isn't really clear on what makes this genre different from Lesbian fiction in general.

Yuri/Girls' Love is a publishing genre. Works that are not published in the genre or whose creators don't indicate belong in the genre belong elsewhere. Queer Media and Queer Romance exist, I think, as the catch-all for GLBT themed or oriented works which are not defined by genre but by content.

It is problematic in that yuri (like yaoi) is thrown around a lot by fans for just about any lesbian relationship, but what is currently in the Girls' Love description and by the use of the genre title implies that it is for works published as such, not lesbianism in general. Shimaspawn is right in that it could use tightening though.

Re works being listed on both: For the manga examples that's certainly no problem other than if a page gets too long, but for examples that are not actually Girls' Love it would be incorrect to put them on a page about something they are not.

It may be worth checking out the Boys' Love page to see the organization system it has at the moment. It currently is going by genre only, with a compromise section for works that are frequently miscontrued as Boys' Love.

edited 23rd Jun '11 4:33:06 PM by whereismytea

Yuri is a slang for lesbian. You might have noticed that in some anime, characters describe themselves or others as "yuri" even in series that are not published as yuri or don't have a focus on lesbianism.

Many works are called "yuri" in Japan even if they don't explicitly self-identify as it. This is similar to the way most English speakers would call DEBS lesbian despite it never using the word in the movie.

edited 23rd Jun '11 5:19:21 PM by CBanana

Stories on this topic are available in all media in all countries.

I guess the argument here is that we might have Romance comics in the west, or GLBT comics, or Horror comics, or Mystery comics. These are genres. Do we need these categories for every source language? I don't think so.

[citation needed]

I'll assume that's for me since Fast Eddie's post is common knowledge.

From the first episode of Maria Holic (heavily paraphrased from memory):

Mariya: It seems that you're a lesbian.
Kanako: Don't call me that! Call me something elegant like yuri instead.
Mariya: It's the exact same thing!

From the I Fell In Love For The First Time doujinshi (author notes):

"That was how I ended up attempting a story in the genre some call 'Lez' and others call 'Yuri'."

edited 23rd Jun '11 5:07:29 PM by CBanana

Well, I want Eddie to demonstrate that this particular subgenre is notably prevalent elsewhere.

I'm not saying it isn't, but I have not many, if any examples of it.

It's not seperated by source language though, but by genre conventions (there are "western" Girls' Love and Boys' Love works—compare the Franco-Belgian Comics which includes at least two examples of comics that are neither French nor Belgian, but follow the style and conventions detailed in the description, the same sort of principle is at work). Further, since these are subgenres they are simply splitting off from the larger blanket genre (Queer Media), not a seperate category, but a subentry. I guess it just comes back to Lumper VS Splitter arguments, but the general point I was aiming for with this thread is that if there is a split than the split should probably have examples which are accurate.

I'm not sure "lesbianism" is either a genre or trope, although it has appearance in fiction and strongly associated tropes in fiction. Girls' Love (the genre) is a subtrope of Queer Romance and Manga/Anime with occasional appearances outside of those media.

Well, isn't that what we're arguing about in this thread? Whether DEBS or Bound belong in Girls' Love or not.

You still haven't told me where exactly this dividing line in terms of content and style is.