Sapphira Mohammed, Copy Editor
Cora Perkins, Assistant Spectrum Editor
From the iconic couple of Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander from “Heated Rivalry,” to the doomed ship of Rodney the Ram and WebstUR the spider, yaoi is everywhere.
Paralleling this intensity are the quintessential ships of Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash from “My Little Pony” and Villanelle and Eve Polastri from “Killing Eve,” bringing yuri to the table.
If you are looking for a place to celebrate those touchy-feely romances, the RVA Yaoi Yuri Club is your home.
The unofficial campus club held their second PowerPoint night on Feb. 28 at Franklin Terrace. Students shared presentations on gay ballroom dancers, original character Vocaloid websites and even an educational lesson on pronouns in Chinese and Japanese.
Though the club has been meeting since September, its creator remains anonymous. The reasoning? The club bloomed out of a joke comment on an anonymous forum, according to third-year business administration student and club president Xiu-Bei Herbst.
Herbst was on YikYak, a social media app that lets users comment and post anonymously with their campus’s fellow students, when someone commented about a Yaoi Yuri Club meeting with a time and place attached. The post went viral and they had their first meeting at Cabell Library on Sept. 5.
“People were like ‘wait, this is kind of fun, we should actually make this real,’ because the host never showed up. So then we learned that it wasn’t an actual club, and so we just made it a real thing,” Herbst said.
Both yaoi and yuri do not have clear definitions because of their history in Japan, according to Them magazine. Yaoi, originally fan-made comics with mostly sexually explicit relationships between men, is now used to describe all media with sexually explicit relationships between men.
Yuri, originally coined as a term for female and female, or F/F, relationships, is now an umbrella term for any relationship between women that’s at least emotionally intimate.
The club’s yaoi presentations were about everything but relationships canon to their chosen media universes.
Presenters testified that relationships in media such as “Hannibal” or “The world ends with you,” between the two male characters were just platonic ones. The audience cheered and applauded for the presenters’ testimonials about how a duel to the death or a two-minute interaction can mean more than what meets the eye to most viewers.
Raneem Hammouda, a first-year pre-dental hygiene student, enjoyed the “Naruto” ship presentation the most, which revolved around the titular character and his best friend, turned enemy, turned best friend again Sasuke Uchiha — being full of internalized homophobia and closeted yearning for decades.
“I love seeing everyone’s obsessions over their favorite ships, their favorite anime, their favorite yuris,” Hammouda said. “It’s so much fun to see people be passionate about what they love and especially if it’s a mutual interest.”
The yuri presentations were sometimes about canon relationships, such as the deep dive into “Revolutionary Girl Utena” that club members Evan Barrera and Casey Watkins went into. But board member Anelis Ortiz-Lugo shipped inanimate objects, such as the relationship between a cigarette and its lipstick stains or the Twin Towers with each other.
Outreach officer Maya Jones emphasized the importance of specialized clubs — noting the joy they bring amid hard times. Jones is also the founder of a mental health club and was the leader of the Black Student Group Union at his high school.
“We are often identified by our marginalizations, it’s nice to have things that unite us in that marginalization, but also our focus on things that we can do the things that we can share, media that we all enjoy,” Jones said. “I do think it’s really nice to have a space where people can come and talk about interests, not just struggle.”
The club is not just about yaoi and yuri, it is a space to share about current media, all things anime, manga or just queer, said Jones.
“I think it’s important for people to know that the Yaoi Yuri Club isn’t just about yaoi yuri,” Jones said.
Social media chair and fourth-year math major Aya Yu said she loves the Yaoi Yuri Club because it is where she met all of her friends. She hopes other members can find that same community.
“I would say this is the club that I had the most fun at. So I really hope that this could be a place where people can find a friend,” Yu said.
Herbst and one of the club’s other social media chairs, Kylee Yanez, said that they want everyone to feel welcome, no matter their sexual orientation or identity.
“It’s a big, happy yaoi yuri family already,” Yanez said.
The Yaoi Yuri Club is not an official student organization, but has plans to become one in the Fall. Check out the Yaoi Yuri Club Instagram @rva_yaoi_yuri_club for more information on upcoming events.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story did not clarify Maya Jones was the leader of the Black Student Unions Group in High School. The story has been updated.