It’s been almost 20 years since I jokingly started an online community for fans of Yuri anime and manga. Our first name was Anilesbocon (Animated Lesbian Convention), a name taken with permission from an Utena fanfic by Dreiser, Scenes From an Elevator. in 1999, I designed and coded the page in state-of-the-art Photoshopped tile background and drop-shadow text. The original design, which stuck around through 2000, is lost to the oubliette of floppy disk backups and webhosts that no longer exist, which seems utterly suitable for it. ^_^
In 2001, our home page first featured Yuricon mascot, out lesbian pop idol Yuriko, taking on the task of welcoming visitors! The art was by my wife, who had no idea what she was getting into. ^_^
In 2002, we celebrated an official 1st anniversary for Yuriko, who was had just met her soon-to-be lover, award-winning writer Midori. Kelli N. did the art for me and this is still one of my favorite pictures by her. ^_^ (Yuriko famously cannot cook.) In 2002, I launched Okazu, as well, to follow the progress of our upcoming event, Yuricon.
By 2003, we were kicked into high gear for the first Yuricon event. Merisusan drew my absolute favorite picture, Kelli colored it and we had our Yuricon 2003 poster, with Yuricon mascots Yuriko and Midori!
After we wrapped up with Yuricon 2003, Kathryn Williams drew Yuriko with a previous lover for our home page. For the next couple of years, visitors were greeted by “Yuriko, With Love.”
By late 2004, Internet fashion had changed significantly, so we revamped the page completely to suit the new standards, with more dynamic content in the side bar. Note the use of Merisusan’s Yuriko and Midori in the left sidebar, please. ^_^ The right-hand sidebar was update regularly with new news.
The site stayed that way for the next 6 years, through Yuricon 2005’s Yuri Revolution event in Tokyo, the main years when we published manga as ALC Publishing, Onna! with Shoujocon and 2007’s Yurisai event. Phew!
As the 2010s dawned, I was working furiously with May Young as a designer for the second time. We tested out Drupal and a bunch of other backend solutions, and we developed a wholly new look for Yuricon.
The site was transitioned to WordPress (thank you gods for WordPress!) in 2014, with the same basic scheme, but finally(!) the Internet had caught up to my vision of dynamic, on-the-fly content. (When I explained what I wanted to the web developer to do in 2004, he just stared uncomprehendingly at me, then mansplained why it would never work for 2 hours. Whee.)
After all these years, we had kept Kelli N’s “I Love Yuri” logo as the primary image. I still wear that logo proudly. ^_^ We also kept May’s art for the header for the 2014 update, although it’s more understated.
We closed ALC Publishing and Yuricon events because the world had changed and the things we wanted to accomplish had, as well. There are more manga publishers putting Yuri out in English than ever before, which is great. There are more Yuri and Queer manga-friendly events, too.
We have spent a lot of time in the last couple of years developing the Yuricon Store into the massively comprehensive place it is for getting Yuri manga and anime, and the Essays page to the definitive list of articles and research on Yuri and related topics.
In the meantime, I had *finally* completed and posted the sequel to my novel introducing Yuriko, Shoujoai ni Bouken. Saiyuu no Ryouko is a second novel about Yuricon mascots Yuriko and Midori.
And we’ve worked tirelessly to update and streamline our Yuricon communities. We sunsetted our old Yahoo Groups mailing list, revamped our Yuri Studio Youtube channel with original content, and developed our Yuricon community on Facebook. I have a number of resource lists, as well a Moments in Yuri page on Twitter. We opened a Patreon for Okazu to help support on-going development…and this year we’ve created a new Discord channel for those of us who just want to chat in real time.
It’s 2018. Yuricon.com has transitioned many times. Now we’re working on a new, more streamlined version. We’re going to focus on the Store and the Yuricon Essays page, the two largest ongoing projects we have. We’re adding new research material and new items all the time! And we’ve revamped the site search so it’s even more robust than ever before. You can search for media in Japanese and English, use our descriptive tags, categories or browse sections alphabetically. Phew. There is an updated look at the current online Yuri (and queer) manga and comics landscape on the Links page.
It’s been fun going backwards and seeing where we started and how far we’ve come. And now I invite you to take a look at the newest incarnation of Yuricon!
It’s still a work in progress, but we hope you enjoy the new streamlined look!
