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Nov 2018

BL is romance, but authors felt the need to separate themselves still by putting "BL" in their avatars. This is a response to that, I'm assuming.

Seems like a good idea. If people are looking specifically for BL, they'll have a place where they can find it. I wouldn't be surprised if other sites follow suit, since BL is such a dominant category.

I wanna to echo the whole segregation issue. It feels really gross to me to just shove all of that LGBT+ content into its own corner. I feel like I say this every time BL is brought up but lgbt+ content has been a part of the independent comics community for as long as there have been independent comics (effectively forever). As long as something is not represented in the mainstream, it will plant its roots in counterculture.

Bad timing too - like, it's pride month. Maybe they thought that this was a positive move for the community, like they were trying to give BL creators their own platform to shine, but instead it feels like it's pushing the LGBT (really just the G) community into a corner. There are a lot of side effects that I don't think were wholly considered by @STAFF.

Considering that the biggest bookseller of all, Amazon, has a separate category for LGTBQ, it makes only sense that eventually Tapas did as well.

Having more genres is simply to increase convenience. Otherwise there would be only two genre, Fiction and Non-Fiction. Imagine how aggravating that would be as for a buyer in a book store? "All our cozy mystery titles are on that half of the store and are sorted by title. Good luck."

Instead Barnes & Noble has Mystery, Thiller, Science Fiction, Manga, etc. even though they are all Fiction. That way the reader can get right to what interests them.

Having BL as its own genre just makes it where readers can get to where they want to get to faster. The less difficult it is to find what you want to read the more time you will spend reading and/or buying.

EDIT: We would love to see more genres in general, because as it stands right now, it's hard to find the content we want to read. Search is largely borked and Tapas only offers 11 genre. Amazon's books section offers 37. The harder it is to find content relevant to the reader, the less time they're going to spend on site, which is a lose-lose for everyone involved.

Honestly it's nothing special. It's kind of like how on Wattpad subgenres of Paranormal/Fantasy stories were so popular that they got their own genres onsite, and we ended up with the Werewolf and Vampire genres.

But if people are looking specifically FOR LGBT+...why wouldn't a separate tag make sense?

And BL...as I have come to know it is hardly LGBT+, tbh. but that's a imo and I know people disagree and that's fine...but... (shrug)

Yes, but then we need more than just BL and we need to be able to pick multiple genres, otherwise you are separating gay romance from romance in general which implies gay romance isn't romance (which by extension confirms misconceptions about gay love as not real love but just lust).
Not having a GL genre also ignores lesbians. Something that has happened in the development of gay acceptance in many countries (in some countries lesbians are accepted more than gay men but that's another topic entirely).
It's all about the history involved affecting the resulting tone of the action. I have no doubt that tapas intentions here were good. I have a gay premium comic here on Tapas; they are very gay friendly. So it's moreso a well intended action getting a result that was probably not the one they intended.

Maybe if you looked at the yaoi industry 8 years ago this would be true, but in the context of webcomics they are more indie, which inevitably means more of their creators are LGBT people with the LGBT in mind. (Like @niah146 said, this is nothing new). So yes, BL online, and particularily tapas, is very much an LGBT thing.

Even the traditional industry is sloooowly improving in this regard.

Also I continue to maintain my opinion that even straight cis people creating gay content can be positive for the LGBT not only as a form of allyship, but also as part of normalization and eliminating the divide between the lgbt and the cis straight. The way I see it, the fundamental difference between gay, straight, cis and trans people is near nonexistent.
But that seems to be a bit of a controversial opinion so yeah.

I've seen a lot of comments that I agree with, and I really don't have much new to say, but I will say what I think. Okay, adding BL genre makes it easier to find BL if you read it, and avoid it if you want. But I've seen a lot of BL comics that aren't like the standard YAOI comics I saw years ago. If they would be on the BL genre, many people see them like they have been seeing some other YAOI comics, nothing different. And that means some people would lost the audience they are trying to get. Just, I'm trying to say that the comics that makes story about love and people falling in love, should look like it outside too. People often think that comic that is BL, is only about twho hot boys getting together or something like that, even tho I don't really think it is for most comics.
If they want to put it as it's own genre, I don't see why they won't make some more of the genres if they're at it anyway.

Ugh I feel like I didn't get my point out since my english is A+ (not really). But anyway, not sure what to think about this. I hope I won't make anyone mad with this accidentally :'D

edit: ah forgot to say that I also think adding only BL might make people angry, because in some way it's not really fair. I fear that it makes people angry and Tapas will be full of angry people yelling to each other :frowning:

I think this is a good thing for BL readers. I imagine if it makes it a lot easier to find BL if that's specifically what you're looking for. Additionally, if a romance reader just doesn't want to read BL, they're going to have a much easier time going through the romance comics list.
I don't think it matters that BL is now othered from the rest of the romance genre. Most Slice of Life comics are also romances, comedies, or dramas, but SoL is still it's own genre on Tapas because many people seek out SoL comics in specific.

What really bothers me (but basically since I started my first comic here YEARS ago) is that you can't select several genres because lo and behold, romance can happen in a sci-fi or fantasy setting.
And yeah, as a queer comic artist, I get that it's due to the popularity of it but it's obviously more for the fujoshi than representing LGBTQ. I don't like labelling my own content as BL because for one, it takes away the ambiguety I'm aiming for and completely erases all the other, non-BL romance. Plus it's not your stereotypical Shounen-Ai.
I find it sad because as someone from the LGBTQ community, it's really hard to find content for yourself. Having BL as the only visible, non-straight option is such a gamble because maybe you're lucky and the story is actually ... representing LGBTQ in a good, realistic way, or you get the typical BL dynamics, which by now make me sick. In the other genres, you don't really know if they have LGBTQ content either.

So uh.... as it is pride month, I'd suggest a subgenre labelled LGBTQ or something along the lines, and subgenres in general because if your story is equal parts A and B, it's really difficult to decide for one and basically lose readership from the other.
I don't really care if BL is kept for the fujoshi and their fetishized version of gay men, but I really wish we had an LGBTQ genre along with it.
(Also, consequently, they'd need to make a GL genre, too, but I don't really see that coming lol)

I agree with this so much. There's a lot of BL comics that are representational of actual gay relationships but a lot of the ones I've seen have the same harmful tropes that old yaoi used to have. Tapas really needs the ability to multi tag works (or be actually able to search tags!)

I'm honestly really not a fan of them separating it that way :confused: Especially without adding a GL genre.
Having Romance (implied hetero-only), BL, GL is a pretty shitty genre system as well, but having only Romance (implied hetero-only) and BL is so much worse. It's so damn frustrating when lesbians and bisexual women are treated as an extension to porn aimed at straight (or possibly bisexual) ppl and serious wlw relationships are constantly ignored or invalidated. Other lgbt+ comics in the romance section might also suffer when there's a separation implying Romance=Hetero

I really wish they would
a) Finally give us a subgenre/multi tag system
b) Fix the search system and let readers wrangle or at least sort results on date updated, popularity etc. (Especially readers-only are unlikely to even bother when they have to go through tons of dead comics to find an active one they like)
c) Both of the above, but really either would make it so much easier for people to find things like BL without creating new problems.

8 days later

i don't really like it, especially considering there's no genre's for GL or straight relationships, and that multiple genres can't be chosen in tapas's system. i'm currently working on a comic with historical lgbt themes, and the two main characters are both gay boys. i would much prefer to categorize my story as romance (and ideally, i wish tapas allowed multiple genres so i also could categorize it as drama), BL, while technically applicable, has certain connotations to me that often imply it is intended for a straight female audience, and the distinction made here between BL and romance feels very othering. this update has left me stuck on how to advertise my comic.

i'd prefer them to get rid of it as its own genre and instead improve the search and tag system. i often get very frustrated looking for new comics on tapas, as outside of what is shown on the front pages it is very difficult to find new things to read.

Couldn't agree more with you that it's hard to find the kinds of stories you want to read on here.

As an aside, there's nothing stopping you from posting your story in Romance. I agree, BL to my mind strikes me as mostly about eye candy for girls.

Considering the nature of BL on Tapas, I think it would be best for those who assume it is by and for straight women to reconsider their assumptions.

Your assumptions hurt the LGBT community, particularily the T part of it but also the G part. Many of my readers are trans men and I am a trans man myself. Because of the widespread assumption that BL is made by and for straight women, people (particularily on webtoons) keep assuming that I am a woman, misgendering me and using the wrong pronouns. This despite me having a blatantly male username. By continuing to assume that BL is by and for straight women, you not only erase those of us who are gay and/or trans, but you contribute to widespread mental harm against us. I think a lot of your idea that BL is by and for straight women is also backed up by you baselessly assuming it all is when you see one, not even knowing the gender of the creator or the fans. Which is part of the problem.

It is really shitty that as I continue through my transition, more and more people IRL respect me as a man, but online people keep "she"-ing me. If you care about the LGBT community, you will work on minimizing this hurtful assumption that contributes to this happening to so many of us trans men making gay content that already have had to deal with this stuff too much in our lives.

Just please. It would be a really cool thing.

Absolutely true.

I think people are still used to the manga/anime culture of female artists and writers creating stories purely for the erotic scenes, masked as romance. Sites like Lezhin don't help it any (I've read some of the comics they put out and there's definitely a reason I don't read them anymore). I've found Tapas to be an entirely different community, with a steadier focus on healthy relationships with many artists- though of course I still come across the 'omg gay people are hawt' stories which give LGBT+ media the bad, fetish name a lot of people still relate it to.

The number of times I've been labelled as straight and female by fans, even when I have blatantly stated in multiple places that the label doesn't even begin to fit me, is distressing. Especially since part of the reason why I began writing LGBT stories was because I know there's people like me out there who grew up without positive examples of LGBT+ in media and I wanted to be one of the people who could provide that and show LGBT+ isn't any different than the hetero stories (which is why I hate the sole BL genre because the whole point is to show we shouldn't need our own genre and it's literally just romance, the gender shouldn't matter but that's another argument.

On this note, it's not that we want to separate ourselves. At no point have I put the BL label on my stories because I want to say it's different or needs to be put in a different category because my main romantic interests are male.

I put it there because, inevitably, there's some homophobic reader who's going to get to a romantic scene and go 'ew gross how could you not warn us I wasted so much time reading your story to get to this'.

It's not that I have any desire to separate my story from others. It's that I don't want to deal with the idiots who aren't going to read the summary, or pay attention to the multiple hints. The small, underwhelming BL label on all my branding images here isn't to say 'omg look boys have sex' it's to say 'if you dont' like it stay away'. Just like I warn ahead of time if there are going to be any triggers in a chapter (self-harm, etc).

Would I love to not have to include that without risking being flamed? Yes. Is that likely to happen? No.

We shouldn't have to. We also shouldn't have to slot our stories into the BL genre like they don't have anything else to them other than the fact that there is gay romance involved.

I can't get behind a BL genre because it's a way to herd all the gay romance stories into a corner. It ignores the GL category, and literally every other LGBT+ bracket as if they don't exist or just aren't important. I could get behind it as a sub-genre, and I've always loved it as a tag on sites where searching by tags is a viable option (pretty much the only thing I liked about wattpad). But making it the sole option as a genre rubs me all the wrong ways.

don't get me wrong i'm a nonbinary lesbian and i read many stories labeled BL, i know that in many cases on here it has evolved to be by and for LGBT people, but regardless its history when considering its origin in shoujo manga is definitely rather fetishizing, so because of that i personally still don't want to associate my comics with that label. if there was going to be any genre othering comics of the sort i'd much prefer a LGBT genre.

4 months later

Is it plannned to add a GL genre tag aswell in the near future? Compared to BL it's of course
less represented on tapas but exactly that's why it would be nice to have some sort of collection or an easier way of finding those few comics on this site and just would be ... fair?