Really interesting Youtube Video that discusses increasing importance / prominence of women in the comic book world as consumers in terms of purchasing etc

[IdiotWithPencil]

ok to return to the original video, what do you guys think about taking marketing courses and buisness corses for making webcomics?

[theladiesi]

I'm all for it personally. I think learning the business would help webcomics succeed as an industry of its own.

[emmyengberts]

Again, I disagree with your rationality and how the industry works. Saying that the hunger games is for girls because the main character is female is like saying harry potter is for boys because the main character is a boy. Many parents will give their children these books or watch these shows with them regardless of their gender.

That may be your experience, but it's not a common experience.

The fallacy of shielding boys from books that star girls

Why boys should read girl books

I wish it wasn't like this. I really really wish it wasn't. But, my own experiences have been very similar.
I stopped reading fantasy novels for a long time because I couldn't find any fantasy novels with female main characters at my library, barely any of them even had female side-characters. I wanted to read more girls so I started reading YA novels because those seemed to have more girls doing cool stuff. I loved fantasy novels and I devoured the few ones with female main characters that came out a couple of years later. But, I still stopped reading fantasy for a long time because all the characters in them were very tiringly male and I was tired of reading stories about just men.
When your gender takes up more than half the Earth's population but seems to only take up very tiny parts in the books that you read... That gets very tiring after a while.

[Kayke]

So long as you could find a class where the information was broad enough that you could apply it to your comics, it sounds like a great idea. Something focused on digital marketing and branding might be the most helpful? Unless you could find a class specifically on marketing yourself as an artist.

When I was in school for illustration we had lectures about web presence, social media, branding, and promotional materials (both digital and print) and I still use the info I learned all the time!

[punkarsenic]

When I was in school for illustration we had lectures about web presence, social media, branding, and promotional materials (both digital and print) and I still use the info I learned all the time!

ive heard of a lot of degrees that teach this these days! its probably more prominent in the 'art with a job to do' side than in fine art, but i dont know for sure... theres also courses some places specifically on business within the arts (although in that case, its stretched from theatre to illustration to music and back)

[IdiotWithPencil]

yeah web marketing would be a great for us specificaly, also I have been in a basic marketing class (just simple stuff and mostly traditional) and I do find it helpfull in marketing my comic from time to time, maybe sombody could post their notes from these clases like they did with the college comic clases

[IdiotWithPencil]

fine arts is also part of the marketing spectrums since you have to make it so people actually asociate your brand as fine art

[punkarsenic]

of course, of course, but i dont know if as many fine art courses dedicate time to teaching their students marketing and business as illustration or graphic design courses do

[IdiotWithPencil]

oh no perish the thought, I think in that case those courses should be diffrent, I don't want to go to a fine arts and traditinal painting class or course and see market theory, that's what the marketing classes and courses are for, now if the colleges of fine art don't put those courses in the curiculum(don't know if that's the right word) then their very slow on the uptake

[punkarsenic]

okay this is just a miscommunication bc university is run differently in the UK. over here, you take A Course and that course covers everything youre gonna learn at uni besides how to get really drunk. so thats how i was phrasing it. i dont expect a degree composited of various classes to have a fine art class that has marketing thrown in.

[IdiotWithPencil]

ah ok, no in Mexico we have a carreare and in it they put diffrent clases about diffrent things, from math to social culture and history, we have this paper called pensum and that tells us what kind of clases we have to pass to be able to graduate, don't know if the UK has a similar system, also we don't have drunk courses we know how to drink comming from the womb XD

[punkarsenic]

haha no in the UK you select a course at university, and that one course is in one thing. for example, you select the 7 year fine art course at edinburgh - totally different to the 3 year fine art course at leeds, or something - and you have a course runner who decides what the course covers - and thats all you get. that might include an economics class or module, but its all in the one course.

and ofc theres no getting drunk courses, its just that people get drunk a lot in their free time lmao

[IdiotWithPencil]

I'm getting drunk right now (beer on the table) also yeah carrears differ uni from uni here too, but not to that degree XD and there should be some drunk courses cause some people really need to learn how to hold their liquor (yours truly included)

[emmyengberts]

and ofc theres no getting drunk courses, its just that people get drunk a lot in their free time lmao

Maybe someone should have told my classmates that... They seemed to think that the "Writing for the Stage" class meant "getting drunk off your face at 4 in the afternoon"...

[IdiotWithPencil]

they need those creative juices man XD *swigs on the be** creative juice

[Amecha]

No, most fantasy stories aren't primarily about humans. Or at very least they aren't all just about humans with one token elf* lady thrown is as a love interest *(I mean sure, LOTR but the main cast wasn't all humans is what I'm getting at). Yes hetereosexuality is more common but why is it a male main character with a female interest instead of the other way round? Why can't some of the other characters who aren't love interests be women? Sure if we're talking about the past of course the lack of diversity makes sense because people then didn't think those people's stories were worth telling to the majority, and somehow they're still not important enough to even grace side characters? Even those this persecution is apparently over? How can both of these things simultaneously be true?

(you're entering stereotype territory)

There is both the stereotype that women like feminine things and the stereotype that women reject feminine things. I like the color pink and pastels and romance and cute things, am I a stereotype? I also used to pretend to hate the color pink and I didn't ever wear makeup and don't dress traditionally feminine, was I a stereotype then? I mean I still don't dress femininely or wear makeup, does that mean I've gotten over worrying about stereotypes and was I reacting to stereotypes before? What does that tell you about me? And what would your interpretation of me tell me about you? You see how layered this is?

Some people fit into stereotypes and some of those people reject them or embrace them. I've spoken to gay people that used to over embrace the super feminine stereotype of gayness because they felt obligated to, and others that rejected it completely because the last thing they ever wanted to be was another negative stereotype. There are stereotypes that say gamers are fat white males, how do you think an actual fat person feels about video games? Maybe they hide their interest because they're afraid of being a stereotype or maybe they embrace it even though they don't actually like games that much. What if they're also white? What if they're not? What if they're female? Or the stereotype that women who like video games are either sexy bimbos that are fake geeks or ugly real geeks. Do you think some ugly women might avoid games? What about a beautiful woman?

I'm not saying that you should reduce a character to a stereotype, you should never do that, but I am saying that for me, my character's relationship and feelings about the stereotypes that apply to them are important to me understanding my characters. Its because I want to avoid making making stereotypical caricatures that I consider these things in depth. It's hard to write characters that are vastly different from me but honestly I'd rather make mistakes and apologize and then get better at writing them then just never write a character that isn't my race, gender, religion and sexuality. It doesn't mean stories about characters like that are inherently bad but I feel like it robs me of plot and story opportunities. The stories I want to tell, and the stories I want to read involve these things.

*edited for clarity

[Luminosophy]

I'm just writing up my opinion on the whole thing, including racial diversity because it's always been directly tied to women in comics/ media issue.

1. I agree that there's been a lot of media that behaved as if women/ other races didn't exist and were only relevant when being a love interest/ hot piece of ass or otherwise the token non white/ "exotic" piece of ass.

2. Media was already trending to change that long before this new young generation sprung up and started hurling names at creators like sexist/ bigoted/ racist for not including [specific list of superficial traits that represent me perfectly character here]. In my opinion, they were doing a good job and all they needed was more time to develop more wonderful thought out stories and epics even that generations will treasure to come. Good work simply doesn't happen overnight.

3. I can't get behind anyone who pressures creators to shoehorn "diversity" into their comics, even if the cast is purely straight white men at the end of the day. I have a friend for example who's story is 100% white dudes with only one black dude. People might look at that and say he's racist, until you realize he lives in Poland and the country itself has a vastly different racial makeup and cultural issues, which he still criticizes from a progressive viewpoint. My beef is that a lot of the diversity complaints are coming from a heavily American-centric perspective. What looks "diverse" in one region is radically different to another, and it's sad to see people make such ugly assumptions about the writers based on nothing more than superficial traits of the characters.

4. The thing about writing is that you write from what you know, or you go and gain second hand experience vicariously through multiple interviews and try to glean as many perspectives within the group you're writing about that you can to work out an average, rather than one person's bias. And a lack or presence of specific genders and races is not a sole determining factor of the story's quality. It's a free market and if someone writes a story about straight white dudes that's utter horseshit, people won't like it and the world will move on.

We have the internet now where everyone and their dog with a blog is able to publish comics with just the cost of an internet connection. The people who have been dying to write stories from unique cultural/ gender perspectives will do so, and if they happen to be amazing material people will like it all the same. I just don't see what the fighting is about anymore, it's a moot point. Everyone has their own platform and is completely free to publish whatever they so desire. Don't force creators to write stuff they don't want to write, don't bitch that people writing diverse stuff are doing it just for "diversity points" and above all, just treat the characters like regular people.

My favourite series to read on Tapastic has two main female characters who are lesbian and I completely forget they even are because their relationship is so natural. It's never brought up even, they're just girlfriends and that's all there is to it. At the end of the day we can spend forever whining at other people to change things to our personal liking (who truly have no reason to care about some random stranger's opinion) and have a billion circle jerk arguments on forums about it.... or we can just be productive and create the change we want to see in the world.

[Amecha]

a lot of the diversity complaints are coming from a heavily American-centric perspective. What looks "diverse" in one region is radically different to another

I completely agree.

I don't care for pushing diversity, especially in just a random person's hobby project. I think diversity is extremely important in mainstream media, and mainstream media that lacks diversity very much deserves criticism and the sort of dialogue it starts is very beneficial on many different fronts but shoving this on amatuer hobbiests can be and is damaging. I care about diversity and that reflects in the stories I write and read, but some people just care about writing or reading really cool fantasy stories or something else and that's just as good.

Unfortunately there is a point where your visibility will punish you for your weaknesses. If your work is in someway offensive your readers will talk about it, they will demand better and that's just how it's going to happen. We can't fault them for deciding to not consume media they aren't happy with, and we also can't fault them for criticising media they're not happy with (being critical of the media you consume is extremely important, you can even criticise media and still enjoy it, those things are not mutually exclusive). Even if that media is from a hobbyist. The hobbyist is still putting it out there for consumption. I don't support witch hunts, I believe if you're unhappy with something at most you say as much and stop consuming or you at the minimum just stop consuming it. You don't hunt down the creator to demand better (unless it's actively harming people). The hobbyist has the choice to cave and do what people want or to continue down their path but losing or missing out of consumers isn't a punishment, it's the natural order of things as much as I encourage people to be as easy as possible on hobbyists.

[emmyengberts]

being critical of the media you consume is extremely important, you can even criticise media and still enjoy it, those things are not mutually exclusive

So true!
I can enjoy TV shows like Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries and shows for young women like it, but I can still critisize them for being sexist as hell and being very very very problematic of (female) sexuality when both shows have attempted rape in the first episode and the girls are the ones blamed for the men (both important romantic leads in the series) forcing themselves on them... Like... nope, not okay! But I still watch it because there are other elements that I do like and it's easy watching.

[IdiotWithPencil]

Yes hetereosexuality is more common but why is it a male main character with a female interest instead of the other way round?

Maybe cause the character is hetero?

lets see one of the rules of writing was write what you know, and write what you want, soooooo if most writers are hetero and they want romance..... they will write a huber gay couple XD, also remember that gays have been opressed/hound and wasn't and "accepted" thing until the 2010 (I know people they still are being hounded but it ain't like in the past where they where burned and hanged),

You see how layered this is?

yeah because those are personalitys traits that we can all understand, and yes you are a stereotype, you're a guy who likes sports? you're a stereotype, you're a girl that likes sports? you're a stereotype, NOW if we add some more traits like, I am a guy who likes sports and musical theator? you are layerd but you are just as layerd as a woman who likes theater and sports, gender is a tool for creating characters but it ain't the be all end all. get what I am saying?

my character's relationship and feelings about the stereotypes that apply to them are important to me understanding my characters.

yeah but it has nothing to do if that stereotype is female, male, human or animal, it's like I said

situation makes the impact

I think you're confusing character traits and stereotypes as mutualy exclusive, like only a gay character will know about having a forbiden love in the eyes of socity (othello), only a female character can know what it is being pressured to be something your not (happy feet) only a bunny will know the terror of being hounded by a fox (any horror story ever made)

again gender, religion, race, etc are tools but they aren't the most important thing in a character, if you can't relate to a guy character and his problems(well written of course) cause you're a woman, or black or gay, then you have a problem and I won't change your mind

If your work is in someway offensive your readers will talk about it

then we will get free publicity and the people who do like it will read it (also offensive really is a buzzword these days, even a foto of two girls hugging is ofensive, cause they ain't black, or disabled or fat or etc. -_- really hate tumblr)