Hello binary gendered tumblr user. Before you is a nonbinary character in a relationship. You have three hours to describe the relationship without calling it yaoi, yuri, or anything else that puts them in the binary. If you fail, the room fills with toxic gas.
OKAY OKAY SO I THINK I MAY HAVE FOUND IT
Naturally, for a matter as serious as this, we have to do a little bit of research, right?
Lets go back to the terms yuri and yaoi. The origin for the term "yaoi" originated as an ironic "Yama nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi" to mean "no climax, no point, no meaning" to show that those works focused on gay sex rather than any plot or character developement.
The origin for the term "yuri", however, is more complex and quite interesting. Gay men were called rose, (bara) in japanese, which was obviously meant to be derogartory, but Japan's first gay magazine, starting in 1971, was named Barazoku, meaning "Rose Tribe". Then, in 1976, the editor of the magazine, Ito Bungaku, used the term Yurizoku, meaning "Lily's Tribe", to refer the female readers of the magazine.
Lilies have been a symbol of feminity in Japanese literature since the Romantic Era. Slowly, in a way that is better explained here, the term "yuri" began to be associated with lesbian relationships.
So I thought, lets go with flowers yeah? Can't go wrong there.
What is the generaly accepted non binary flower? Turns out there are a couple options. From the wild pansy, to other perfect flowers, and some other less popular ones. The wild pansy is the flower with all the colours of the nonbinary flag, so one point for that.
But as a STEM student, what interested me more was the nonbinary symbolism of “perfect flowers”. In biology, bisexual flowers, aka perfect flowers, are those flowers that have both male and female parts on the same flower, making it difficult to classify them as male or female. So cool, that's nonbinary as hell.
Hey, it'd be funny if that nonbinary flag flower was a perfect flower too. Haha. Right?
Wrong. The Tricolour Viola, or the Wild Pansy, is a perfect flower. And it's is not funny. It is an AMAZING. IT IS AN EPIPHANY.
The term for it in japanese is Sanshiki-sumire, (三色菫 / さんしきすみれ), which in japanese literature symbolises modesty, humility, and quiet beauty. We can shorten this to Sumire.
There we have it. Yaoi, yuri, and sumire.
this is it. This is what i was alive for all these years. Im going to go scream in a pillow now. goodbye.
