I tossed you a pm because this sounds super similar to the situation I had in mind when mentioning that, but I'd rather not name names in public either.
I'm gonna be completely honest here and say that the majority of BL fans terrify me with how.... passionate they are.
I've been contemplating on making a BL about two regular cats just to see if I attract the same kind of fandom. Does BL work if it's just like... some cats, or does it have to be cute human boys with CHESTS?
The comic Adam & Steve1 by Simon Eriksson has that, and it seems to work good.
nah i wouldnt want a fandom like that. shipper culture, especially at that level, is really uncomfortable and i dont want to face that pressure as a creator. its so far from what im in it for
that said, if theyre a paying fandom, id put up with it. maybe.
o man that is cute ;-;
@joannekwan Yep just some normal cats doin cat... stuff. It does sound cute but I'm not familiar with the BL fandom so I don't know how it'd be received :u
Sometimes I wonder about making a BL comic just for shits and giggles...like one that panders to the tropes (minus the rape one). Then see if it can actually be successful.
But...every time I brainstorm a "romance plot", it derails and becomes about something else which has little to nothing to do with romance. Plus, seeing all the crap I have said on the forums, I think some BL lovers might quickly find out I am not a fan.
Oh man I love ramen but it makes me sick so I just eat a lot of apples. I'm probably like 65% apples.
LOL because it's SO FUNNY AND INFORMED to assume that most or even a large amount of BL and comics featuring mainly gay male characters predominantly feature rape as a hilarious trope! That's not an out-of-context assumption at all! And that a majority of fans are "creepy" or "weird" for being enthusiastic!
It probably is worth pointing out that any fandom, regardless of what they focus on, will have its more regrettable members. It will also have its majority of perfectly fine, unobtrusive and unobjectionable members who just like what they like. And if you are not in that fandom, it will be very easy to just see people who are as strange and inscrutable.
As I've pointed out numerous times before, having dudes into dudes in your comic is not some easy path to fame and fortune. It's bad when a creator just fetishizes gay men and doesn't respect them enough to support them having, you know, actual human rights...but that's a rarity. It's a lot more harmful at this point when people become hyper-critical and jump on the anti-anything-remotely-BL bandwagon with misinformation, incorrect assumptions, and frankly harmful stereotypes misrepresenting stories that incorporate gay guys.
There is no easy, handy formula for popularity. Even if some stories that incorporate BL elements achieve meteoric popularity, and even if it's a trend for a long while, that's just another trend. By the time you've jumped on it and produced enough to keep a title sustainable, it'll be over. Don't do that. Don't just put gay dudes in your comic in a woefully misguided attempt to garner popularity or readership, because it won't be something that ends up successful in the end.
I am for stories that tell more stories of gay male characters, because they are not common even now. I want to see the different perspectives and different ideas. Pointing fingers and assuming does a great deal more harm than good, and I don't think it's a very good thing to end up discouraging people from telling the story they want to tell. There's far too much of that here at Tapas(tic), and it just comes off as sour grapes.
Work on your story, and in time you will have your own solid and stable audience, I'm sure. If you're eager to toss your story out in favor of something that might be more popular in the moment, I have to question your dedication to the story you claimed to want to tell.
It's easier to look at a popular comic and claim it became popular because it's insert-genre-here or because the system on the website/platform worked in its favor, than it is to recognize reality, which is usually one of the following:
- You haven't been around for long enough. Establishing yourself as an artist takes YEARS or even DECADES.
- You are too slow or not good enough. This can be fixed, as speed and better content comes with time as long as you try hard. Recognize the importance of practice.
- You might be in the wrong medium.
If an artist isn't willing to keep going despite this, they can forget about getting successful. There is no easy way to success. Only tons of hard work.
It's straight up insulting to have my 13 years of hard work practicing art, and 10 years trying to get my art out there online and observing statistics and marketing methods, all summed up to "Nah you didn't get where you are because you worked hard, you got where you are because you followed that goshdarned gay agenda and drew trash for teenage girls to drool over and fap to".