Want To Create Toxic Yuri? You Could Win $500 If You Do, Lesbians

Lesbians. Your time is now. Create the toxic yuri of your dreams.

In fact, a visual novel game jam is paying you for your toxic yuri. So go develop some gay games where women are mean to each other.“Toxic Yuri VN Jam” is an upcoming visual novel game jam designed “for girlthings with something wrong with them.



” The jam, which starts on June 1st and runs until July 14th, encourages developers to create games that “tackle trauma and problematic relationships.” Topics such as “despair, jealousy, and rage” are all welcome. Let your gay girls act gayly and terribly.

“Stupid girls that make each other worse. Sadistic girls being manipulative on purpose. You know, all that stuff,” the jam says.

“Basically, we love it when girls suffer, yaaaay!”Screenshot: nadia novaThe best part? If you submit a game to Toxic Yuri VN Jam, you could win some cash. The game jam’s hosts vow to play through every submission and pick five games to “receive a $500 PayPal headpat.” That means $2,500 are being sent out over gay girls doing bad things gayly.

Or gay girls doing gay things badly. Maybe both? Regardless, yes, you could win $500 for your lesbian stuff.And no, you don’t have to be a professional game developer to create one of the five games selected by Toxic Yuri VN Jam’s judges.

So if you’re a queer game dev new to the field, now is all the more reason to go create your dream game.“Please note that, in addition to the overall quality of the works—writing, art, music, etc.—one of the primary criteria in determining which entries will be granted an award is being on-topic,” the jam page notes.

“Intention and sincerity are the most important parts of our judging criteria, so try and make something representative of your heart more than anything!”The rules for ‘Toxic Yuri VN Jam’ are pretty nontoxicScreenshot: Toxic Yuri VN JamRules for the jam are simple. Game entries must be gay (duh), with a focus on “toxic queer relationships between women or toxic queer female experiences.” Don’t know what toxic yuri is? For the purposes of the jam, toxic yuri can be “anything from idiots navigating awful inexperienced romance” to “intentionally abusive violent criminal relationships.

” Either way, the relationships should be “complicated,” with topics like “conflict due to trauma” or people behaving poorly toward one another for no good reason. And yes, while your story doesn’t need to be innately depressing or miserable, it should still fit the core themes of the jam: Girls doing toxic things to each other.“Be mindful of harmful stereotypes regarding gender, sexuality, mental illness or games that come off as malicious towards the reader,” the jam’s hosts write.

“While the stories themselves can have characters or interactions that are bigoted, we do not want entries that promote bigotry! BE NICE.”Oh, and yes, AI is strictly forbidden. Draw your own art.

Write your own stories. Your toxic yuri better be created by a person, not a machine.A toxic yuri game jam Built On a ‘relatively accessible form of game storytelling’Screenshot: KillJillToxic Yuri VN Jam is hosted by five queer game devs.

One of my personal favorite developers, yuri visual novel creator nadia nova, is on the team. As she told me, visual novels are a “relatively accessible form of game storytelling,” and Toxic Yuri VN Jam is an opportunity to “help and encourage others to make games about gay girls having a hard time.”“Tackling on trauma and heavy themes is basically the default for any form of media, but when it’s about sexuality or queer themes suddenly it’s bad, bad, bad, bad,” nova told me.

“Adult and queer stories are important, and creating pockets of community for them to be realized in, uncensored explicit themes and all, only seems to gain more importance each day.”Her co-host Kyou System echoed similar beliefs. Kyou said the jam’s focus on toxic yuri was not just chosen due to the topic’s erotic allure, but as “a reaction on my part against the ongoing and increasingly emboldened crusade against there being any real, thrilling eroticism in art of any type.

”“To be erotic is to be pornographic, and to be pornographic is to be vile, degenerate, and an affront to public morals, or so the reductive thinking goes,” Kyou told me. “It doesn’t matter that sexuality is a core part of the human experience—think of the children!!! I want to fight against this pearl-clutching as much as I possibly can, and helping to run a toxic yuri jam is, I feel, a very effective approach.”Kyou also stressed that it’s “critically important” to offer spaces where “uncensored adult creativity is not just barely tolerated but rather is openly encouraged.

”“I feel it’s likewise important that we support and encourage people who’ve suffered through these sorts of traumatic situations to tell their stories, giving them an opportunity to express what they’ve been through in frank, unflinching detail,” they said. “My hope is that, through these events, I’ll be able to help encourage and inspire the creation of VNs that open someone’s eyes and lead them to realize that what’s happening to them is NOT normal, NOT their fault, NOT something they deserve, and NOT something they’re powerless to escape.”‘I’ll be damned if I’m just going to roll over’Screenshot: deaddeaddeathI’m a big fan of toxic yuri; I’m currently working on a short story video game series focused on toxic yuri, and most of my ASMR work plays with the concept in some shape or form.

Like Toxic Yuri VN Jam’s hosts, I feel the shadow sides of queer sexuality are not given the attention and care they deserve. The parts of queer love, sex, and relationships that tend to end in pain, anguish, fear, and new trauma triggers? Those are rarely seen in popular conceptions of queer relationships. Toxic Yuri VN Jam is clearly trying to pave the way for a richer and deeper form of queer representation in art, not just unapologetically standing behind queer sexuality, but unflinchingly accepting queer relationships for their warts and all.

This seems particularly important now more than ever. As Kyou said themselves, “there’s the matter of queer sexuality and expression being targeted.”“Things were starting to get better, but now that we’re seeing a state-sponsored anti-LGBT crusade in conjunction with the anti-sexuality one, there’s no doubt going to be a massive chilling effect on publishing any kind of queer content going forward.

But I’ll be damned if I’m just going to roll over and let the soulless ghouls orchestrating these crusades sterilize the world of any artist expression that doesn’t meet their ever more cartoonish standards!” Kyou said. “No, this sea change for the worse only serves to underscore in my mind how important it is to keep running jams like these, to keep doing everything I can to nurture this wonderful community of queer artists and to encourage them to continue creating their art and telling their stories irrespective of the political climate.”As for the cash prize idea? Kyou admits they took the idea “wholesale from VN Cup.

” As they told me, Kyou both insisted on the idea and is “fronting very nearly all of the cash for it,” hoping that cash prizes will aid visibility for both the jam and aid creators in the space.“Firstly, offering cash prizes to the winners helps to generate more interest in the event, which in turn draws in more talented participants and improves the overall quality of the submissions, thereby helping the community to flourish,” Kyou said. “Secondly, considering the targeting of queer and erotic content, I’m hoping to counteract any anxiety that potential participants might feel about creating and sharing their work with a tangible and significant incentive.

”$500 is not a small sum of money. I’m hoping Toxic Yuri VN Jam doesn’t just encourage great artwork, but gets money into the hands of queer devs who need the help the most. If you’re one such dev, head on over to the game jam’s itch.

io page to learn more. You still have a month and a half to plan your idea, although production proper for your game should start June 1st.The post Want To Create Toxic Yuri? You Could Win $500 If You Do, Lesbians appeared first on VICE.

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