Hello again, Everyone. Let's call everything in the quoted block below "Version 1"
I still think this system will work but dividing the genres into "Prime" and "Secondary" is causing confusion and distracting from the intended purpose.
So let's start here:
A filter system.
Much like how BestBuy lets you search for a television, you can filter and organize via check-boxes to see what is available.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?st=tv&_dyncharset=UTF-8&_dynSessConf=&id=pcat17071&type=page&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=&sp=&qp=&list=n&af=true&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&keys=keys
There would be dozens of genres with the possibility to add more at creator's requests. You can check the boxes you want and find all that apply to those Genres. All Genres are equal in the eyes of the search function. And this we have these as potential options with, of course, room for more:
Genres (Including but not limited to):
Action
Adult
Adventure
Anthology
Anthropomorphized
Art
Biography
BL
Comedy
Crime
Drama
Essay
Experimental
Fairy Tale
Fantasy
Folktale
Gaming
GL
Gothic
Horror
Joke-a-Day
LGBTQ+
Memoir
Meta
Mystery
Mythology
Non-Fiction
Poety
Politics
Psychological
Reference
Religion
Romance
Satire
Sci-Fi
Short Story
Silent
Slice-of-Life
Sports
Spy
Superhero
Swashbuckler
Thriller
Tragicomedy
Travel
Tutorials
War
Western
Other Qualifiers:
Number of subscribers:
Enter a min-max range
Format:
- vertical
- horizontal
- color
- monochrome
- monotone
- black and white
- limited palette
- digital
- analog (traditional)
Completion status:
- Active
- On Hiatus
- Completed
- Cancelled
Number of Episodes:
Enter a min-max range
Language:
Self explanatory
Country of Origin:
Self explanatory
Free, Freemium, or Premium (+ Ink Cost range)
You can check any or all boxes in any group and venture through the depths of the catalog.
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Version 1: disregard but left for reference if needed.
Hi everyone.
I will be updating this post with new genres and info as this topic progresses so please check back here for new info
Last time I posted here I caused quite the ruckus so lets see if this topic is more agreeable.
I think the Genres on Tapas need work. I think it's hard to find specifically what you're looking for and as a creator it's hard to accurately define my own comics for readers.
Two types for defining: "Prime Genres" and "Secondary Genres"
EDIT: 10/22
Primes and Secondaries work identically. They would all have pages for searching and you would be able to go to a Prime and see all of the Secondaries it contains and specify what you're looking for
OR
you could click a secondary and see the Primes it contains and specify that way. You can also search just for GL or Tutorials no matter what Prime genre they are contained under. There is room to add ever-more secondaries but seeing them listed in the genre section can help readers find options they didn't know they had instead of relying on tags.
The difference here is it could be more easily organized on the site. You would see the Prime genres listed at the top by default, but click the "Seconday Genre" button and see the mass of options you have available to you.
EDIT: 10/22
As there are some passionate responders about Genre I have adjusted some of these in an effort to return to the original topic. **
The Primes are thus and work the same way as the current system where you can pick two. But there are only 8:
Action
Adventure
Romance
Comedy
Drama
Thriller
Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Non-Fiction
This should make it easier to boil down what you're looking for but also provide potentially more and different stories than you would have found in the current system
Secondaries are additional metadata that refine what you're looking for. I would also imagine you can search specifically for any of these and find comics that span the above Prime Genres. For example, if you want a BL comic, you might be able to find all the romance ones as well as the lesser know adventures or dramas.
The Secondaries would be thus (with room to add more. Feel free to suggest any):
Silent (Comics without speech bubbles. IE Trashmaid, Danemen, Ascent)
LGBTQ+
GL
BL
Adult
Western
Horror
Mystery
Sports
Religion
Slice-of-Life
War
Crime
Gaming
Non-Fiction
Poety
Experimental
Tutorials
Politics
Art
Joke-a-Day
I'm also figuring you can add as many of these as fits your story.
Thoughts? Concerns?
In a perfect world I would push to also implement a review system where readers can confirm that stories are accurately being portrayed in the right genres but that would take much more work than just adjusting these.
Ideally if enough of us agree that this would be a beneficial direction we can hopefully push Tapas to implement and the inclusion of more genres would be attainable
EDIT: 10/22
Some further clarifying of the idea.
The above does NOT mean that the secondary genres wouldn't be featured. In fact, I'm envisioning that you can would have MORE pages to view this way. Yes there are 7 "Prime Genres" but for organization, there are all of these additional qualifiers that can be searched.
This way you can, click a Prime Genre and see all of the comics that have been set under that banner OR you can click a Secondary Genre and get a cross-genre view of everything. The main point being BL and GL. If you are looking for that in your story you can click that Secondary and see, not only romance focused stories but action/adventures or comedies.
Some additional polling info to help: https://twitter.com/WintreKitty/status/1314671727318896643?s=20
It ended up being a small pool of voters so grain-of-salt and all that.
I know this is counter-intuitive compared to what folks are accustomed to at this point but the hope is for a more robust organizational system for finding new comics that allows you to search as broadly as you want or as narrowly.