yeah, i had a paragraph explaining how i think the genre is too vague or shouldnt be a genre because of that main reason but imma keep my mouth shut incase someone takes it the wrong way
Very excited to hear about the sub genre addition 
I feel like almost (if not) every story could benefit from that to various degrees.
I assume it's to cover all the other sexualities not strictly BL GL or straight? To cover all the bases? It does seem weird to lump Ace and Pan into the same territory, and I feel like people who want their searches to be better prefer more specific genres, but it's a step forward, I guess.
I'm pretty happy about these new changes, but I gotta admit I'm a bit bummed that the two genres option isn't going to be available until later rather than releasing both changes at the same time. I'm excited to be able to include the LGBTQ+ genre for my comic, but as several people are already kinda noting, it makes more sense as a secondary genre. It would be nice to be able to keep my comic in Fantasy while adding LGBTQ+ so that people looking for that sort of story can more easily find it. But I'm glad that doing so will be an option soon. ^_^
i figured the distinction was made clear about that here in the email
While we recognize BL or GL and LGBTQ+ genres are not always mutually exclusive, we are being mindful of certain portrayals within these genres that we’d like to keep separate from the LGBTQ+ genre. We believe that it’s incredibly important for creators to have the freedom and flexibility to self identify the genre of their series and want to create more safe spaces for creators to tell their stories.
the tropes and content differ so like you can kinda tell what's a bl/yaoi story from a story that contains or focuses on an mlm relationship
Yes. Finally. The Tapastic gods have heard my prayers!
Now hurry up and add an "Other" and "Superhero" genre tag, for Pete's Sake!
I'm really happy about this for this specific reason. I put my comic in BL because it felt somewhat more accurate than Romance in general, but it doesn't really follow the BL/yaoi tropes. I spent a lot of time on picking a genre because the options that were available all seemed to come with typical trope expectations that didn't really fit my story. I'm hoping I can reclass my comic to LGBTQ+ when that's available, because I think it would be much more accurate.
LGBT+ sort of stands in as an umbrella term both to describe a group of people and as a genre term. I have been publishing online since 2012 and have noticed that the standard genre tag is "LGBT+" on pretty much every other publishing site. It really surprised me when tapas didnt offer that at all. LGBT+ can include a wide variety of stories beyond just the tropey romance which BL (and to a certain extent, GL) has come to represent. It can include more serious/realistic gay romance, ownvoices stories (the story of what it is like to /be/ trans or gay etc), stories with multiple romances of multiple sexualites, stories about people who are not lesbian or gay but are trans and asexual and so on, stories more about politics/fighting for rights, and yes, stories that contain LGBT+ characters but maybe not romance. On my other online stores I often debate if i should use it as a main genre or subgenre tag, but here I couldn't use it at all, and that was very frustrating to me 
. I think this tag really can help readers who want LGBT+ focused stories but maybe not the tropes of BL and GL (which i don't really have anything against, I like to write those tropes too lol). But I have been considering posting my more serious m/m/f poly romance/mystery novel and really just needed that LGBT+ tag. I did not want to just lump it into BL and call it a day 
Anyway, I hope that helps to clarify about why this genre tag is useful! Maybe you'll peruse it one day and find some good stories 
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I'm excited! It will be nice to have my fantasy/gl comic actually be in those genres. I'm also excited to be able to more easily find and read gl and lgbtq+ stuff
I remember that from the other thread! Maybe the two genres per work can mitigate that somewhat, in a few months? Like combining BL and LGBTQ+ to show your comic won't be just about the main characters' romance.
Ok I’m gonna sit down and talk about marketing here. First up, there are large amounts of readers who search for representation FIRST and genre SECOND. I have readers who follow me around contemp romance, horror, fantasy, sci-fi. LGBTQ readers consume a wide range of stories and many will read outside their preferred genre if it has LGBTQ representation in it. Also, LGBTQ readers are generally good at financially supporting creators through purchasing works. That’s just the market and how it is.
LGBTQ is inclusive of non-binary genders in a way that BL or GL isn’t. But also, LGBTQ is often more about the themes that are being tackled. The history of “queer fiction” versus BL/GL is mostly down to who is creating it and the issues that are tackled. BL traditionally did not look at the real lived experiences of queer people (though that’s changing!) and instead focused on romance between two characters without societal commentary. If you read Tapas’ email you can see them acknowledging the lenses are different. It’s not a value judgement, it’s just an acknowledgment that there ARE nuances that need to be addressed.
Finally, there are a lot of people, especially us old folk, who remember the Bad Days of BL as a genre and want the option to not associate it with our work while also clearly having a searchable genre to place our works in for the marketing reasons above.
And really - that’s it. That’s the tweet. You may be comfortable using BL/GL and that’s fine. The LGBTQ is there for non-binary characters, asexual characters, and for works that are more focused on queer identities. Or at least that’s how I read Tapas’ email.
I'm very excited for this as a creator but especially as a reader, it was hard to find new GL comics (which is a category that gets over shadowed by others in lgbtq+ sections IMO) Sifting through the search tags was time consuming so I gave up on that for a while. This is a welcome change!
A possibility to select two genres for one work would be great in any case. I think, many comics would benefit from it. (For now it's possible only for Premium comics, but not for others)
I personally don't see anything unusual in presence or not presence of LGBTQ+ characters. I saw very interesting comics both with them and without them. I also saw many comics, where we don't even know orientation of characters (so we don't even know are they LGBT or not), cause they don't have romantic or sexual interactions at all.
But after your detailed explanation (like a person, who knows topic better), I have to agree that this category may be useful for some amount of people. If it will really help more creators and readers to find each other, then so be it. ✿ڿڰۣ—
It's a good thing when creators are able to find their readers.
