yuri as a genre

[illuvium]

alluded to in my last post, i've been thinking a lot about this lately. i understand the origins of the terms of yuri and yaoi as being very helpful in that girls & boys love are both things that stray from the heterosexual norm and as such will have different aspects by virtue of not sharing aspects of i guess straight culture. i still do think that such terms are more obsolete; the true value of those tags has really faded and does stories that get categorized as yuri or as yaoi a disservice. i feel like this is probably going to have some certain pushback just because that sort of overrides their status as like, pushing against societal norms, but i do feel like it's not ideally meant to be a genre. the relationship type tells you (mostly) nothing specifically. the most i can think of only really applies to yuri and would then involve the interplay between homophobia and misogyny (which i can also fathom an argument for even for m/m couples, but which is more clearly prevalent if they're both girls), but that's never a common subject matter for things in my experience. i think just grouping something as yuri or yaoi as opposed to actual genre tags like scifi and whatnot can be so limiting for legitimately good stories. this might be limited just to myself, but when i personally come across a recommendation post for something and the key point is that it's about two girls or two guys, i get slightly uninterested. tell me more about what the actual premise of the story is, for god's sake. this is seeping into a trope talk post more than anything, and i feel the same about the yuri/yaoi tags as i do about monikers like enemies to lovers and the one bed trope and whatever else, which is to really say that the tropes themselves can work and i don't hate them by themselves, but that more elaboration really has to be done aside from just the label. i don't think that everything needs to have some grand theme and message that must reach everyone in the audience, but i do think that if it's a story that's trying to take itself seriously (and it's totally fine not to, i think; it just shouldn't be everything that's out there in the literary sphere) that it should actually try to do something fresh with the tropes. anyway, pardon the discursive post (though most of my posts tend to end up this way). hope you've all been doing well!!