Balatro Yuri
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About
Balatro Yuri refers to a series of yuri fan art depicting romance between anthropomorphic versions of various cards in the indie deckbuilder video game Balatro, most often between Blueprint and Brainstorm. Posted since September 2024, in March 2025, the trend achieved virality in the Balatro community as a reaction to the /r/balatro subreddit moderators removing some LGBTQ-themed memes and sparking a controversy on the platform.
Origin
Balatro is an indie roguelite deck-builder game in which players can improve their run by upgrading cards and purchasing various joker cards. There's a number of joker combinations that synergize well together, and the joker cards Blueprint and Brainstorm, both able to copy another card, are considered to have a strong synergy.[1]
On September 17th, 2024, X[2] user @BionicoBandito posted a yuri fan art of the two Balatro jokers, the earliest found of its kind, which received over 700 reposts and 4,100 likes on X[2] and over 1,500 reposts and 4,500 likes on Bluesky[3] in six months.
Spread
On December 28th, 2024, Redditor key4427 posted a humorous yuri fan art based on the Yoshi and Toad Kissing meme template. The post (shown below) garnered over 9,700 upvotes in the /r/Balatro[4] subreddit in three months.
On March 23rd, 2025, an unknown Redditor posted a cropped version of the image in a comment section of a post in the /r/balatro subreddit. The post was subsequently removed,[5] with the removal reason being "No low-effort posts/comments."
The post sparked a backlash against the mod team in the subreddit, with users replying with yuri artwork and memes in the following days.
For example, on March 24th, 2025, Redditor ProstateFondler posted[6] an Awesome Lesbian Couple meme referencing the controversy that gained over 4,800 upvotes in the subreddit in three days (shown below).
On March 26th, Redditor No-Extension-2864 posted[7] a yuri fan art of the joker cards Constellation and Astronomer that received over 12,000 upvotes in the subreddit in one day (shown below).
On March 24th, 2025, the /r/balatro moderator team issued a statement[8] on the original comment being removed, affirming that it stands with the LGBTQ+ community and announcing that adjustments to the NSFW rule would be made.
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[2] X – @BionicoBandito
[3] Bluesky – @bionicbandit.neocities
[4] Reddit – Blueprint x Brainstorm Yuri
[5] Reddit – Blueprint x Brainstorm Cosplay
[6] Reddit – Balatrosexual
[7] Reddit – No one can stop love when it is real, nobody!
[8] Reddit – Clarification on Recent Image Removal & NSFW Rule Update
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Top Comments
Hpar Arafle
Mar 27, 2025 at 02:29PM EDT
GreenLinzerd
Mar 28, 2025 at 01:18AM EDT