First off we'll begin by saying this is a difficult post to make but we feel it needs to be said for both personal reasons and for the overall health of Tapastic.
Context is always important to help explain the situation. Before we get into things, here is our understanding of the situation around "Learning Curves".
Tapastic is getting into the publishing business on a limited scale. They are taking on certain projects and backing them financially. The first project they backed was "Fashion Star". That's the only confirmed project we know Tapastic has money invested into. But given the cover art style, it's fairly clear that Tapastic has money into "Learning Curves" and "Spin" as well. If anyone listens to "What's On Tap" you can tell that Tapastic likely has a financial hand in "Learning Curves" because they spent so much time talking about it during one of their episodes. Recently most of the "What's on Tap" shows have focused on promoting just a few select projects in order to help increase interest/sales rather than covering a lot of topics/comics/stories. There's nothing wrong with this but other than the feature with "Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo" team, Tapastic seems to focus on things they have a direct financial benefit from.
Because of this invesment, this is why you see certain things constantly promoted like "Learning Curves", whether or not the project is actually popular with readers or not. Tapastic has a huge number of readers and is trying to capitalize on that, because at the end of the day they are a business. We don't know what the scale of Tapastic's financial involvement is, but the company is trying to branch out beyond revenue through ad and key sales alone. Since there is only so much start up money, Tapastic has to find other ways to make ends meet, such as the Tapas and Bambette shirts. We certainly want them to be successful at all these different branches. Otherwise we could go the way of Inkblazers and shut down.
That said, we aren't sure why Tapastic picked "Learning Curves" as a project to put money into. The concept seems like a bad idea to begin with. From "What's On Tap," it's supposed to be a humorous take on teen pregnancy, its supposed to "start the conversation about biases against pregnant teens" but it just comes off in bad taste to us. On the cover alone, what's that giant pink thing supposed to be anyhow? . . . On second thought, maybe we don't really want to know.
No one here at Golden Plume has any interest in "Learning Curves" because it makes us very uncomfortable.
Which is why this thread started in the first place. Some of us are uncomfortable with certain content. There's a lot of NSFW content on Tapastic, but for the most part, not much is said because it doesn't get the spotlight like what "Learning Curves" has received. And "Learning Curves" is only receiving that much attention because Tapastic likely has money tied up in it. If it was a creator only project it probably would not get any attention at all. NSFW content has a right to be made because people have a right to draw what they want and free speech. But should Tapastic really be getting financially involved with questionable material?
Maybe the reason for Tapastic getting into "adult content" is because adults are more willing/able to buy keys on Tapastic than teenagers. But as others above have pointed out, they are adults and not interested. Maybe Tapastic wants to get into "controversial content" because its buzzy and generates sales like "50 Shades"? No idea, but "Learning Curves" just seems like a bad choice for a new publisher to pick up.
At the end of the day with Tapastic becoming a publisher backing projects, it is going to make some questionable choices. It's part of the learning curve of the business. Hopefully they will stop pushing "Learning Curves" but they probably won't until they recover their investment which means it will continue to get the spotlight until it eventually breaks even and then fades away. Unfortunately the content that Tapastic chooses to promote does reflect upon Tapastic, as both a company and us as creators, which means all of us may lose some potential new readers or current readers because of it.
