LGBTQ+ Promotion ! What got you into it?

Eliphium 2023-07-24 22:20:16 UTC #1

What got you into LGBTQ+ novels, webcomics, art, etc?

Promote your work here and show it off!

I can remember when I was younger, I was really entranced by early BL manga. I was quickly captivated by the art and story of some. It made me want to read more or be hooked on an ongoing series. I knew I always wanted to write some, so here's my first attempts at a BL.

"Fish Out of Water" BL

Elick is down on his luck but one day something odd happens and he finds a man in his lap. Unsure who this man is, he holds interesting keys towards Elick's family and how he knows them. Elick is excited and captivated by this strange man. It's almost as if he has his personal playmate, until he starts to develop feelings and is forced to keep them a secret.

ThunderChicken 2023-07-25 00:13:43 UTC #2

I’ve just subbed to your story. Truthfully, I had seen it before and thought that I already had, but apparently not. I will read it as soon as I can.

With me it was the fact that I’m gay and wanted to read about gay characters. I followed a few webcomics with gay aspects but with most the guy-guy stuff is a side story. I discovered Tapas a little over a year ago and was blown away. Not only could I read LGBTQ stuff, I could publish it, too!

…and so I did.

Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days was my first story. They say to write what you know, so that’s exactly what I did. It’s a true story about growing up gay and closeted in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

I will warn you, this story is heartbreaking at times, terrifying at others. It is a true story, and these things really happened, tragic though they are. It isn’t all tragedy though: there are plenty of good things that happen as well.

With that one out, I decided to try my hand at a fantasy. All my life I’ve dreamed of sprouting wings and taking flight, so I created a story around a character that could do just that. Then I created a world of shapeshifters that this character belongs with but didn’t even know about. Naturally, there is lots of gay (all shapeshifters are male, and yes, they reproduce sexually, though the act isn’t described in detail in the story because I wanted something PG-13).

pixxiepinks 2023-07-25 01:33:07 UTC #3

For me, it was that my friends were reading and engaging with queer content back when I was in late middle school, (as that was around the time some of the first GL and BL animes were really gaining attention in the West.) Wanting to impress my older schoolmates in high school I read a few BL and GL manga and watched the queer-coded anime they were talking about. Sadly by the time I was done, they had moved on to the next trend, so I never did impress them, but it was my first experience with LGBTQ+ media of any kind. Later when I realized I was LGBTQ+ identifying, it was an easy jump to start writing queer fantasy for myself.
.
So I started writing my Fantasy BL novel - the Epilogue isn't the End

And my Action Fantasy LGBTQ+ novel - Never Insult the Healer

AshAndDorian 2023-07-25 14:52:03 UTC #4

Very interesting thread, I'm curious about the answers everyone will give.

In our case, it's pretty simple : it's our community.

It all starts with frustration and a constant feeling of alienation, until you find that one series, that one movie, that one fandom... Whatever it takes to finally connect to others. You end up finding a family through that, when your biological family just doesn't feel like one anymore.

It's the idea we tried to convey with Townsend Mansion.

Everybody is a "villain" in it, because that's how we were mostly depicted during our childhood.

In any case, thank you to all our Allies, we love you. <3

darthmongoose 2023-07-25 15:00:59 UTC #5

I had my mind blown when I discovered manga and anime in my teens, and how it would put LGBTQ+ characters into stories that weren't just about being queer, but just had queer characters as part of the team on an adventure or something. I hadn't connected with the highly sexualised and stereotypical gay characters in media when I was a child, but thanks to manga, and then later comics like Homestuck, I was able to come to terms with being gay myself.

Now I make a comic about a bunch of LGBTQIA+ people (various types) being magical knights and stuff, because I want to express that part of me and the vibrant community I've found myself in.

Rodrigo_Silveira 2023-07-25 15:47:30 UTC #6

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UrMom 2023-07-25 16:30:24 UTC #7

Soooo I got into queer stuff when my friends exposed me to BL/yaoi when I was in high school, never realized that type of fiction was a thing (For some reason... despite knowing of The Bird Cage and Queer as Folk. I was a super dumb teen.), didn't look back into cis/het fiction after that. It took me a long time to really pinpoint WHY I liked consuming and creating that type of fiction, outside of it "being different and new", but I think it was just nice to indulge in something that wasn't shoved down my throat since birth practically. Like since I was a small child I was told that I was going to date, get married and have kids, in the "correct manxwoman way". Even now, as an adult in their 30's who is clearly not cis/het, I still get told that I'll find A Man and change my mind about having kids.

Honestly, I hate it. Queer fiction is a reprieve from the bullshit I'm supposed to assimilate into.

That being said, uuuh, I guess I have my comic. The Guide to a Healthy Relationship.

Currently on an undetermined hiatus, and not a romance in spite of the title. It's a psychological drama/character study about a couple of oddball adults dealing with mental health struggles and trauma brought on by abuse, traumatic events and poor upbringings. It deals with really heavy topics (Abuse, suicidality, bigotry, a bit of body horror and gross-out, some self-harm, etc.), and is M-rated (full nudity, substance abuse, profanity, mature themes.), so if you're sensitive and under the age of 17 don't read it.

Nugapug 2023-07-25 23:46:56 UTC #8

I got into making Fourthly Puzzled after watching content related to the LGBTQ Community, such as for example, before I got into the idea, I was into the animated series Steven Universe, and it became one of my most favorite shows when it first came on, as I was captivated by its animation, the stories, and heart they put into it.

After that, I want to make my own series in order to connect with others since I'm an ally, which became the idea of "The Fraternity Home," (A thesis name for Fourthly Puzzled since I was trying to come up with a name for it at the time.)

It was around the time during the early pandemic of Covid, and since I had the free time, I thought I could attempt to bring the idea to life, and make it into a slice of life comic of LGBTQ parenting. Then on November 2020 on Deviantart, the webcomic was born. It took seven comics of course, but it was up until I want to change a few things, such as the styles, settings, and the format of the comic as they were originally "Left to right" panel comics at the time, and changed it to a left to right, and scroll down kind of webcomics. Then on January 2021, Fourthly Puzzled was born.

So, it was doing fine, but deviantart, Newgrounds, and Instagram (Although did some performance,) wasn't doing much, and want to expand it to other sites. That's where I discovered Webtoon about a couple years ago, then Tapas last year, then GlobalComix this year around a month ago.

Fourthly Puzzled
Meet the three women named Georgia, Tina, and Rachael who all (mostly Georgia and Tina) raise a little boy named Andy, and take in a new life into a small city of Alnanza, and making friends and take new advantages in their lives along the way.

TheLemmaLlama 2023-07-29 01:04:23 UTC #9

Not sure if I count, but I end up reading a fair bit of LGBTQ+ stuff because for some reason, most comics that explore Interesting Themes (which I actively look up, based on my own arbitrary tastes) happen to be BL or LGBTQ+ (Examples off the top of my head: "Ghost Eyes", "What Happens Next", "A Guide to a Healthy Relationship" by UrMom ...)