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originally written 4 november 2023.

a while ago bnha was having some wack-ass plot development (as it always does), this time finally delivering payoff for the toga-ochako parallels n foils n whatnot that it's been setting up for ages. i do not really hang out in Deep Fandom Space anymore (not since Fandom moved to twt lol), but i remember star complaining about it bc the fannish spheres she'd migrated to after leaving the Het™ spheres bc something-something, none of the people on her timeline celebrating this birth of this new "toxic yuri" had read even a word of bnha, which, y'know, as people who lost years of their fannish lives to my hero academia, looked king of silly to us.

then, more recently, i started seeing people talking about "toxic yuri" more often, which, like. whatever i guess. not really my cup of tea, but whatever!!! except that this time, i started seeing people use it to refer to arlecchino/furina, aka arlefuri, and i ended up having some thoughts. lol.

my thoughts on arlefuri are that it feels like shipping "toxic yuri" for the sake of shipping toxic yuri, and i think that for me, it's not really that compelling. like i can understand finding toxic relationships deeply fascinating, but there's a difference between a relationship being abusive and a relationship being toxic, although they do overlap.

for a toxic ship to be appealing to Me Specifically, the characters would have to be on equal footing— or at the very least perceive themselves to be on equal footing, but i don't really see arlecchino and furina as being on equal footing: arlecchino violated furina for the gnosis, only to realize it was not there. furina is deeply traumatized by this, and her method of coping with it is not to be toxic and manipulative towards arlecchino, but rather, frightened of her.

as such, i view arlefuri as more of an abusive situation than a fascinatingly toxic one, but people keep branding it as "toxic yuri" when i simply fail to see the mutual toxicity of it.

thinking about it, i think that's kind of my beef with the phrase "toxic yuri" in general. like obviously yuri is when things have Themes and Motifs (most prominently yearning and isolation and inability to cross a gap and the desire that lives in said gap as a result), so toxic yuri to me would be at its ideal when one character is like "i could fix them" while the other is like "i could make them worse" but like, in the first character trying to fix the second, they make the second one worse; and while the second one tries to make the first one worse, they just make them "better" in some way (most likely more determined than ever to "fix" the first one). the mutual burning desire that grows between them while they're in this downward spiral, like some kind of sick pond scum gaining mass as it sinks to the bottom of a pool—

That, to me, would be compelling toxic yuri.

but also, a pure toxic yuri relationship would have no hope of getting better for realsies, so after a while i'd probably get ill off it anyway lol.

• i agree @ arlefuri thoughts is basically the same thoughts i had
• like sure u can onsidedly toxic yuri for whatever reasons (they just think arlecchino is hot) but [to] ME PERSONALLY IT IS not compelling.. if its just one person being harassed......
• and also i feel like a fair amt of ppl who like it
• just seem to think it goes both ways either w furina liking it or her fighting back and idk thats just not what we saw in canon LOL
• yeah same idk what the arlefuri people are seeing w/furina's rxn
• this is like if signora x venti gained a foothold
• HDBKJVGBDJ
• LMAO
• why is this exactly it
• at least venti isn't scared to death of signora
• bc venti's more mature he's not like spiritually fifteen like furina
• if venti was a girl signora/venti would be a ship tho
• yes.
• you are right.

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