GL Category? Am I the only one?!

[liquidlilium]

You're really not the only one.
I think lesbians and wlw fans are just so used to being invisible and ignored we're sick of complaining. But I've talked to people irl and have been meaning to post about it as well.

There are queer women and other GL fans that don't want to give this site a chance because only having het-coded romance (that's how the romance section looks at first glance thanks to banners, top lists and having a separate BL category) and a BL category does feel very unwelcoming.

And it does really bother me that so many don't consider this a problem because "GL is such a small genre" (of course it's gonna be small when you push away the demographic) or "at least the search system for tags somewhat works now"

[joannekwan]

I just fight against the het-coded romance category by keeping my mlm focused stories listed as romance. And if I were to ever publish a wlw story, I would also keep it under romance even if GL was an option as a genre.

I don't really like calling my work BL, since that sub-genre is rife with tropes that mine don't really fall into, same goes with GL.

Actually, I believe a much needed genre is supernatural, particularly for low-fantasy stories that don't feel like they fall under fantasy per se.

[Kura]

I actually have a hard time bringing my friends that are active in the GL community onto this site because they feel

• unwelcomed
• like their work will be buried / ignored, so it's not worth the effort
• and because it's really difficult for them to actually find other GL comics because there's no GL tag, and most stuff gets burred really quickly.

I'll give them links when I find a GL while I'm on here but most of them will not bother with a site they already feel unwelcome on.

[unknown_user]

I fully support the idea of GL category.

[Kelheor]

Well, Tapas has a BL category, it is only fair if there will be a GL category too I would go with Romance for both, but...
Because really, the whole category for Gaming, but no for GL? Are there so much more gaming comics than GL?

[joannekwan]

At the time of Tapas' inception yes, there were a lot of gaming comics, but that trend seemed to have died down.
@michaelson are there plans to have a GL category? Since people do want it.

[Tobirone]

I'd be all for it too ... for obvious reasons. cough cough nOsaka Slang kinda is GL
Though I am in a splitt here. Yes GL is of course a part of my story for example but it surely isn't the only part. Drama, Romance is too ... though the GL part is the driving force so ...

Yes, would be nice to have.

[liquidlilium]

Thank you for actually writing this <3

I've talked to many feeling this way irl, but sometimes it feels like I'm the only one actually on tapas having this problem.

And if you don't mind me asking, which sites, discords etc are they on? GL communities can be so hard to find^^;

[liquidlilium]

It seems pretty much everyone that wants a GL genre (including me) would love to have some kind of multiple genre system. Maybe with a limit of 2 or 3 genres or so, so ppl don't abuse it by adding every genre for exposure.

But that would likely take more time and work (I can't know for sure without knowing coding of course) than simply adding a GL genre.
So I would be super happy with them adding GL in the meantime, even if I think a multiple-genre system should be added to keep Tapas competitive in the future

[silverraven0]

In my honest opinion, I would rather have an LGBTQ+ category. Since, you know, it would cover a whole sexuality spectrum and no one will feel left out or feel that tapas somehow disrespect the sexuality because they didn't make it as a category like BL.

And if they want to consider another suggestion of mine, it would be best to set it as a secondary genre. It's not like everything BL or go or lgbtq will necessary about the LGBTQ revolved. Maybe the lgbtq is just an spice that was added but not the main ingredient (Ya, well, got want I mean?).

If they can't let the non premium creator have 2 genre on one work, just let the BL to be set as secondary genre when it was chosen, thought It might not be easy on the coding part, so just don't mind me lol.

[liquidlilium]

The problem with that is that LGBTQ+ is so wide nowadays wlw content would still be buried not really helping the problem with wlw fans feeling unwelcome. (might work on a site with less BL but not here)

The fact LGBT (or LGBTQ+) isn't a genre can a also create unforeseen problems like people pushing for all queer content to be put there regardless of genre. Since BL and GL are specific genres you can't really argue to same way that anything with wlw/mlm pairing needs to be put there.

[ryoko]

The one solution that I've seen and adopted myself is putting a +GL in my thumbnail so that people skimming the thumbnails in the Fantasy category can see my comic also has GL. I've found a few new series to read because of this, too.

[bjwebb]

I agree that the current system isn't great. I'd also like a broader category (LGBTQ+ or something), because most of my work tends to be...difficult to categorize? The current project I have up is mlm, and I had initially put it in romance because it doesn't follow any of the BL tropes, but it was getting zero attention there. So I moved it to BL where it's getting subs because I think that's where people go who are looking for queer material.

Which...okay. But I have other projects that I haven't put up here yet. The next thing I'm going to be working on is huge, epic space opera/romance that includes all kinds of combinations of romantic pairings and threesomes and more. It's got mlm, wlw, mlw, and more. It's got aromantic and asexual spectrum characters. It's got questioning characters. It does not belong in the BL category. But how do I tag is so people who are looking for that sort of content will find it?

I just don't know!

[michaelson]

@michaelson are there plans to have a GL category? Since people do want it.

Hm, the main reason why BL was introduced was because of the significant reader demand for it, we're not seeing similar demand for other categories so I don't foresee us introducing a GL category in the near future.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[joannekwan]

But how do I tag is so people who are looking for that sort of content will find it?

I would put LGBT+ on the thumbnail, or like a little rainbow flag. And include tags like 'asexual', 'questioning', 'wlw', etc. in the series tags.

Per the separate LGBT+ category suggestion: I'm still iffy on it, as I was with the introduction of BL as a separate category. Like, the differentiation is good for people who want to seek it out specifically, but I still would rather try and normalize non-cishet characters/relationships by introducing them naturally through the story. In the past I've had a couple of readers who say they don't normally read mlm stories, but found themselves enjoying Heavy Horns. If Heavy Horns was blatantly advertised as BL, those readers most likely would have skipped over clicking on the story.

[JRHoch]

I write stories with gay characters but label it BL because it does better than when I try to put it in another category. I like GL stories (I watched every episode of the "L Word") and definitely look for that tag.

[Kura]

Thank you for actually writing this <3

I've talked to many feeling this way irl, but sometimes it feels like I'm the only one actually on tapas having this problem.

And if you don't mind me asking, which sites, discords etc are they on? GL communities can be so hard to find^^;

Like you said GL communities are really hard to find, and when I do find them can sometimes be really disappointing because it's mostly guys into loli smut. The places I actually find the most GL fans is LGBT+ sites and discords (some of which are closed groups because LGBT+ laws are different depending on country) pretty much everyone there is looking for stories with LGBT+ content, so of course the more popular sub categories for it like BL and GL will come up (even if a lot of them don't like most BL or GL, they'll honestly take whatever they can get)

Aside from online communities I know most in irl.

Complaining about tapas is VERY common in both circles, but that's very likely because I'm there and introduced most of them to the site since my own work is on here. A lot of them didn't even realize you could post non BL or straight romance comics on here, and a lot of this misunderstanding has to do with the lack of genre tag too.

To people outside of the community, the lack of GL genre isn't due to 'lack of demand' they don't know the community, they don't work for the site, they don't see the 'demand numbers' they just see that the GL genre is not there and to them it means there is no GL here or GL is not welcome.

[therealbereth]

significant reader demand for it, we're not seeing similar demand for other categories so I don't foresee us introducing a GL category in the near future

Hm, but as has already been stated: the demand is there, the people just don't feel welcome to share (or read) GL on here. Wouldn't it be worthwhile, then, to try and introduce a genre like GL to make sure the wlw community would feel more welcome on here? I understand that a visible demand helps in discerning which genres a site would need, but I just have to open twitter to see how many GL authors are around—and most feel unwelcome and silenced by everyone.

So for tapas to maybe consider a genre like that, I think it would not only help visibility for the stories that are already there, but it would most likely (by word of mouth first, then comes the snowball effect) create a surge of these stories. And tapas would be considered the site that helped feel wlw creators more welcome overall.

Doesn't that sound like a chance for both parties, tapas and GL fans?

[michaelson]

There's no denying that there's an audience, authorship, and demand for GL stories, but we don't really see that demand on Tapas, and not in the magnitude that we saw with BL. I think we would need to see a significant increase in the number of series, search for, subscription rates and retention rates for GL series to really consider adding it as a genre.

Again, we're trying to approach genre in an organic and pragmatic way - BL series were proliferating on Tapas even before the genre was introduced. When we looked at the data and the demand, we saw that there was a clear necessity to segment Romance into two different genres.