Hi there! It'd be great if you looked through this thread created for black comic creators and their fans to boost their stories here on Tapas! I'd appreciate if the thread was pinned and if you could take a look through some of the series and consider showcasing them on the front page in some way. Spread the support from the forums to the front page!

Thanks so much! Looking forward to finding even more stories!

Thanks for your answer, that is really much more friendly, looking forward to new horizons, have a good day)

One of the big focuses in terms of financial contributions is towards front line bail and legal fees.

That can be done at national levels and local. Plenty of organizations could use that support.

How about supporting small businesses in black communities?. One of the current struggles due to the covid is paying the costs of adapting the small businesses so employees can work from home. Also the fact that with the current situation many small businesses are getting broke and that means more people are getting unemployed.

I haven't been on Tapas that long. And when it comes to any creators backgrounds I dont really know.

As for me personally I'm spilt since I just posted my first episodes yesterday. And I'd honestly love the chance to promote my work. But at the same time I want my work to shine for itself.

🤷‍♂️

god, as long as you don’t pull the same shit you’re doing with pride month. make sure it’s black creators making black comics, not white creators with a poc mc

Well... Create space for black voices on the platform for a start. You’ve done it for LGBTQ and BL/GL. Creation of perhaps a BIPOC “genre” may also be a good step, or encouraging writers who write from their own marginalised experiences to submit for featuring opportunities. Encourage use of tags more, perhaps, to indicate this kind of information and make the search work to actually pick this up properly.

There are interview spots that you guys sometimes do. Get some black voices on those, and yes, promote their work. But also move beyond that and speak to them about the issues that also are still faced in posting/creating/publishing work.

Encourage sensitive conversations around diversity, both on the forums and through content put out by Tapas itself. Educate your community.

Do a social media call that asks the black community what they want from Tapas. Just being real, there aren’t many on the forums because the forums aren’t that comfortable for many marginalised people. You’ll get a better response on Twitter/Insta/FB.

Dedicate lists on the front page to elevating black voices throughout the year. Black History Month aside, there’s also Africa Day, and other identities that can be pulled in and celebrated more in that way.

Hire someone who is able to look at your business model and assess where the bottlenecks are that are stopping black creators come forward.

Actively search for black and BIPOC voices to elevate, and if they’re not on Tapas yet, find out why and reach out to some creators to bring them on board.

Just some ideas.

What about something like "Creator Spotlight"? Ask black storytellers to give what they think about what's going on, how does it make them feel, and any other questions you would have, but most importantly, will they keep creating?

I belive the best way is too listen to what they need, what they been asking for, and let they be in charge as well, allow them to have agency in how their work can apear in the spotlight, create a spotlight section on the main page that is hard to miss and that everyone can see it.

Don't exclude black authors writing novels either. Not every artist is making comics, and I would appreciate being able to sift through novels written by black authors made easier.

I just want to say thank you. That's all.
I stopped going on social media outlets for a bit and decided to retreat here to the tapas forums and focus on my comics as a form of escapism, and I just want to say the support on here really means a lot, and thank you for creating a safe space for so many different people here on this platform.

I could definitely see how it would be problematic to have a verification step. I don't know it's just a little weird for me since I joined Tapas in April and then joined the forums in May. And I've only participated in a handful of posts. So I guess I'm still not used to being here.

Here's my story.

And that's always the danger, I think. As black creators, there are very specific times when the wider writing community shows out for you, but as soon as the experiences of black creators online aren't centered, the environment becomes just as hostile again. Allies can come and go as they please, we can't exactly get bored of being black and suddenly move through online spaces as if we aren't.

Because of that, I've become wary of setting up shop anywhere where the culture isn't openly moving towards being safer for black creators to exist openly, let alone thrive. Part of that positive cultural shift is creating an environment where black creators can thrive without narrowing their content to what people think we should write. Street Fic is the only genre where having a majority black cast isn't seen as a brave artistic choice or political statement, because everywhere else, representation is seen as deviance rather than diversity.

Then there's the actual labour of moving through artistic spaces where the majority of people aren't aware of what it means to be a black creator on there. From discussions about having to justify black characters, or awareness around problematic representation and the historical weight and weaponising of tropes like the 'Magical Negro' or the 'Noble Savage', to being tagged in threads by non-black creators who want to know if an idea for representation they had is acceptable (it's often laced with trauma and the labour to explain why is almost always met by people ready to belittle or contradict your points despite taking no time to research on the matter).

It's a lot. And frankly the black creators I know in online spaces like this only put up with it because they may want to see a community do better by them, or being openly black is the easiest way to find community with people they won't have to educate to feel comfortable around.

So that would be nice too, creating an environment where BIPOC and QPOC can openly congregate to create community, share ideas, network and provide refuge for each other.But that's forum specific.

On the main site, it's really hard to find works by other black creators. I usually rely on checking the libraries of the black creators I do know and making my way out from there because there's nothing to signal for their content in searches. Even then, many of the great works I do find are abandoned or posted elsewhere where they find traction offsite more easily.

Because the thing is... black stories aren't monolithic, so they absolutely can find an audience anywhere that offers that genre, but they may not be written with that entire genre in mind as a target audience. There's a good thread on twitter explaining how culture and history affects narrative voice in fiction and I'll link it below, and why a work can find an audience on tapas but not necessarily a dedicated, core following, because the people it was made for aren't given a pathway to finding it.

A dedicated highly visible feature list would probably be a start, but that also relies on black readers being shown that this is a space where they can find black voices and stories, and gaining the trust of an entire community like that is a long process. And if the spikes in engagement with the Black Lives Matter movement have shown anything in the past, it's that robust allyship on this scale is very temporary, and black people have learned to only trust the allies who stick around and put in the work after everyone else has literally gotten bored and thinks it's okay to no longer be as vocal.

thread on black vs non-black narrative voice:

https://twitter.com/ElleOnWords/status/126857836414469734512

This also speaks to some of the biases that make it difficult to create content where your readership doesn't have a strong, visible presence.

I want to recommend two friends of mine, but their comics are available in portuguese only for now:
https://tapas.io/series/Rei-de-la6
https://tapas.io/series/Istella4

Dani Bolim is an amazing comic artist, too:

Hey everyone! My name is Nic, and I'm a black artist. I make silly webcomics, and hope some of them can make you laugh during this not so great time!

Thank you, it'd be really great for people to read more stories from Black creators like myself. It's really nice to see that we are appreciated by people.

BLM

And also, I have five different stories myself that you guys can check out
series thumbnail

I will admit it's hard to find black stories and POC stories on this site lately. (Not sure if it's because creators are not using hashtags). when I find a story I usually go to their library to see what that author is reading. At my local library and an app they use there is a filter called African American Voices.

Anyways, I have a comic called Crystal Visions. I co-create it with my writer Brianna HS.

This is actually great point and a wonderful suggestion about a filter feature for African American creators/stories. Admittedly, I've been on Tapastic for a number of years and was unsure if it was either really difficult to find POC creators on the platform or if there weren't very many of us to begin with, as I'd only met a handful of other black creators until very recently.

Well, since folks have begun to self-promote, hello! I am a Dutch mixed black woman currently writing my first serious novel Jade Kingdoms. I also make the art for it, hehe.

4

I also have a mini-comic series dedicated to my novel Jade Kingdoms:

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Hi there! I've been on here since 2017 My name is G.G.Y, I'm a black comic creator from Toronto, Canada and I'm the creator of Over 8 Miles!

-G.G.Y

This is wonderful! thank you!

Thanks for being proactive! I'm a black creator from Los Angeles. The comic I'm currently working on is High School Bites9 I'd love to see a tab on the front-page similar to the LGBT+ collection but maybe with more than just 11 titles featuring work by black creators. Thanks for listening!

-Amauri

check out my first attempt at writing
Title: Falling Stardust
XASHA who grew up in Lithuania a land where fights for mana veins happened every day, loves having knowledge of everything around him and in this world of magic where nobody knows how it works. He finds himself thirsting for answers to the questions nobody has the answers to. he also wanted to change the political landscape of this world where few have and the rest have to become slaves in order to get a share. Having taught him all they knew, his parents sent him to the White Lotus Academy to further his studies. It's there that he meets the pink-haired Combat Medic Megan and his best friend VERRA. together they set out to change the world as they knew it, will they succeed?

https://tapas.io/episode/17678133

p.s i'm a black creator

It was awesome to see the support over on Twitter! I would like to see the same ad on the main of the tapas home page as well

I'll just go ahead and promote myself here as well. I'm ghost, I'm 17 and biracial and have been working on my comic Mirror Monster since 2017
https://tapas.io/series/Mirror-Monster7

I'm a black writer that's new to Tapas. I was really nervous about publishing this novel because it's dialogue is written in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and I know many non-black people consider it to be "improper" so I worry it will turn people off from the novel. Most books are written in the typical standard English. But I find it very comfortable and relatable to read. I hope others who are black and speak in AAVE will find it comfortable as well. https://tapas.io/series/High-Tech-Low-Life12

I'm Taneka Stotts, a Black & Queer writer who loves telling all sorts of stories. Right now you can catch me telling Casual Hex thanks to the art from my best friends Ria Martinez and Genue Revuelta! We're a diverse team unified by our goal to create stories that don't exist and to keep putting twists on tropes!

https://tapas.io/series/Casual-Hex5

Hello! I'm a black writer and artist from New York, and I've been reading comics on Tapas for a few years now.

Like what everyone else is saying, I think a huge step toward inclusivity would be making it easier to locate other black creators. We want to support each other, it's just sometimes hard to find the content unless you already know who and what you're looking for. For the first time since I've signed up for Tapas, I've gotten brave enough to post my own comic!
https://tapas.io/series/Exhale6

Anyway, I'm super excited to see the black creators and love that this forum thread exists! Just found some good stories and can't wait to read all the art!

thank you for pinning this thread, as a black creator it means so much for the support of everyone
for black creators even when we feel invisible.
here are my comics: