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Oct 2020

Err, can someone explain to me why comics having a similar art style or marketing is bad?

If something shares a genre aren't they SUPPOSED to have similar marketing/writing styles? That's very much the case with novels? (I don't know If anyone is aware of that one snake in EVERY new fantasy novel cover, but it's pretty hilarious.)

I don't think is a case of lack of originality, but rather a very specific marketing choice.

I just nodded along to @Junohugger post because I wasn’t sure what was an indicator of problematic relationship portrayal with any of those covers save for the Strings. Gentle Giant in particular is as sweet and relaxed as they come...

I've read most of these, and the ones I have are super cute and generally have positive representation. My Gentle Giant is adorable and the two leads in it are in school and very innocent. Apart from 'tol and smol', that's where any 'dynamic' ends there. It's got two incredibly shy boys who like cute things and each other and some light drama and some pretty art.

I also wonder just... how are people supposed to be drawn on romance covers? Because some of the ones highlighted above are just really typical romance covers that you see pretty much everywhere. The only difference is that it's two dudes on the front. How are they meant to show they're in a relationship and the comic is about that relationship otherwise....?

For anyone wondering about that one snake plaguing all novel covers. (Lmao, the books featured are really good. It's just funny the cover artists used the same assets.)

A Court of Thorns and Roses
Children of Blood and Bone
Days of Blood and Sunlight
Girls of Paper and Fire

No... this is not a series... this is just how you name a YA fantasy novel (and these are all actual books that have sold very well!) Lol.


Just wanted to emphasize that the point of classing thing together in a genre/sub-genre/category in the first place is "cohesiveness" and "sameness." Sameness is not a lack of originality. It is often intentional.

However, you can critique genre elements you find harmful, "they all draw the same" doesn't really make sense.

One could argue that the covers would be similar to straight romance(but with 2 dudes). However, if the author wants to avoid uke-seme dynamics, and avoid getting the couple stereotyped as "he is the man of the relationship and he is the woman" having one of them with more submisive body language and other with more dominant one, will give the wrong impression.

Gotta say i agree with that. But when someone openly speaks about doing said representation, they choose to carry this burden and responsibility for better and for worse, and is fair to call them out if they don't practice what they preach.

...Uhm, you do know artists get inspired by works belonging to fellow authors in the same genre, right? This style existed before BL webtoons even took off

As for why the "seme" and "uke" type of character style is so obvious:
It's just typical character design, it presents things about the character that don't have to be said

Characters that are in power or "evil" of some sort are often triangular, friendly and more soft looking characters are often roundish or have round attributes and square characters are often stick in the muds or just a bit more levelheaded than most

Seme are often a mix of triange and square while the uke are often round with not many edges

Can we put this in a frame?.....wish people understood that instead of being so quick to make accusations related to representation.

But if somebody makes a book about a cishet white man, nobody would call them out for not including every possible type of cishet white dude in their story.
"HMM, this book only has a skinny white dude." "Why are there no disabled white dudes in this story?"
That's the big difference here. If you make a work with characters of groups where there's already a huge body of work representing them, your work isn't expected to represent the entire breadth of experience of that group on its own. This is exactly why being an LGBTQIA+ creator is hard (and ditto for PoC creators). Because our work is "representing our group".

Do you argue that? Or just a generic ‘one’?

In novel section, the covers on BL work show landscape, a single male, wolves and hands as often as they show the leading couple. Because, well, novelists don’t draw all that often, and Internet is not overflowing with the copyright free art of two kissing males.

Unless you want both lovers to hold their arms firmly pressed to their own hips or be of the same height, they will be embracing one another, and either facing the reader or looking into each other’s eyes to convey that they are in love.

Actually, maybe it is better if you show the examples of the covers that have two lovers on it that you like?

There is a difference between adding characters of a certain group and preaching about representation.

Some characters just happen to be gay, straight or whatever group you wanna add, but if the author gets preachy about it, they will be open to judgement

Exactly, that is my point. That is why is fair to call out anyone that claims to do that.

I dunno. Try to kiss or hug someone and someone might say that you were taking the dominant or submissive role depending on how high your arms were or your expression at the time but that is based on the viewer's assertion of heteronormativity surrounding what they view as feminine or masculine body language. You can really only tell by reading the content itself, not from the covers.

Sure, gender roles are still in the collective subconscious. Guess is tricky to remove it from the mind of viewers and creators alike.

The problem comes in when people insist that their work should be applied across the board, so to speak.

And someone may not choose to go “deep” in representation and have that character be a walking archetype of said representation. Which also applies to having marginalized characters in stories and they need to be a squeaky clean version as not to “offend”. They can’t be flawed or villainous without being demonized in some way.

So really, if we're critiquing representation, which is all fair and good, then we should really be looking at engaging further with the content beyond what is on the cover. You should be analysing not just the plot of the story, but the characters and themes and actually engaging with it on a deeper level and working out what the author is trying to say or do with their work.

It's not as simple as going "OMG IT'S ALL PASTELS THEY'RE ALL THE SAME AND SOMETIMES THERE'S A TALL GUY AND A SMALL GUY" because... well... Small guys who fall in love with tall guys is a thing! Boys who all wear pastels and have kpop fashion and date each other is a thing! Couples who do magic or who fight crime is a thing.

I guess what we have to conclude in this thread is: you can only examine mixed messaging if the promotional material of the series does not match with the content of the series OR the creator does not get across their message due to two conflicting structural points in their work being mismatched.