Queer Creator Tired of BL

[TAMAnnoying]

I think there talking about the ones more likely to be promoted on the front page tho? Unless I miss understood

[somekh]

But why does BL have to be the one form of “rep” that has its own genre? What about WLW? What about trans literature? What about BIPOC queer literature? Why is MLM the only thing worthy of its own distinction?

I’m exhausted of it - BL should not be it’s own genre unless other forms of rep also get their own genres. Let it fall under the queer umbrella.

[joannekwan]

Personally I think there should be a distinction between the imports and home-grown community works, but OP didn't make such a distinction so I took it to mean the entire category.

[skicoak]

Personally I think there should be a distinction between the imports and home-grown community works

Not my genre, so can you elaborate on the difference between the two for those not familiar.

[joannekwan]

For the purposes of the site itself. They made BL its own genre because so many titles were bloating the Romance genre. The audience demand was high enough to warrant it as well.

[TAMAnnoying]

I mean I agree? I think the community grown BL is usually much less.... problematic, then the imported ones but tapas has been trending to push up the import ones more as of late. That would still be tapas own fault but... yeah I donno. Like I said I get a lot of double think when BL gets mentioned

[joannekwan]

The discourse the past month is that the imported/translated works are out of touch with the western market and promote negative stereotypes and harmful content.

[TAMAnnoying]

To back up @joannekwan I’ve seen this problem with the het romance genre as well as of late

[somekh]

All that ends up happening is erasure and neglect of other queer literature.

And you can’t act like you don’t see homophobic fetishy comments on damn near every update of the popular works.

[joannekwan]

And you can’t act like you don’t see homophobic fetishy comments on damn near every update of the popular works.

Well, a site doesn't really have control over the people that visit it and what they post. That's on the commenter to get educated. At least here creators are free to delete comments they don't want to see.

[foxnflames]

I’m not gonna say you won’t have to dig for them a little, but there are stories on tapas with the representation you have in mind. I’m sure quite a few are created by us here in the forums.

I would love more queer BIPOC representation (BIPOC anything, honestly), so I wrote it 🤷🏽‍♀️

[NickRowler]

two skinny white cis twinks

Why are you calling the asian characters white?

There are a lot of LGBT+ and BL that have these

I want sideplots and casual rep! I want trans characters! I want diverse body types! Give me fat queers! Disabled queers! BIPOC queers

You just have to do some digging. Most of the main BL showcased on this site are from translated comics, with a lot of them being Korean. So they might showcase some more of the traditional BL stereotypes you don't like. Maybe take more time to look at comics with smaller followings.

[domisotto]

Here is the GL genre since the OP specifically asked for wlw, containing 162 works in novels, all of them free to read

Edit: sorry, it cannot link to genre, but there is a separate genre for GL

I am sure asking for recommendations for BIPOC non BL works or body diversity will net plenty of creators overjoyed to present/share their work.

[alexlcuri07]

This might help with some of the rooting:

Hey all! I already have a thread where I give feedback to anyone who posts their novels, but I have a lot of free time right now! As a LGBTQ+ writer I know its not exactly mainstream for our stories to be advertised in media, or at least not representing us. That's why I want BAME and LGBTQIA+ people to post their work. I promise to at least read and comment on your first chapter. I'll have this thread running for a while. I don't know how much feedback will be useful on comics as I'm not…

[alexlcuri07]

And the thread you mentioned earlier actually has a lot of body diverse, BIPOC, lqbt+ main characters. Maybe this will help too.

I need some cuteness it has been a day. Show em to me. Link your comic. Go nuts.

[KJWhitten]

I'm sure stories similar to that exist on Tapas. You just need to put in the effort into finding them if you really like your BL content. Besides, no one is forcing you to read those stories that your ranting about. You can just ignore them and just help the ones that you care for. In my opinion we can't just go around and take down every BL we disagree with. If we did that, you would be limiting freedom of expression and chasing away people who want to write BL.

[Missapogee]

Saying this as a Lesbian of color (though I don't think that should change the value of my opinion here) I think that while representation is nice and all, I don't think stories are obligated to include it or be labeled as 'bad' and 'invalidating', artists should be allowed to draw whatever they want. If their story doesn't happen to have characters who check boxes A-Z, that's fine by me. They're not my characters, and I'm always free to read something else.

[Capsona]

@ratique kindly close this thread because it's an outright bashing to complete genre and the artists involved in this genre. It's hateful and not accepted.

[TapasCommunityTeam]

[TapasCommunityTeam]