Why so much salt?

[Lindsette]

Sure! I have seen a few lesbians commenting on this post saying they can't find good GL so here it goes:

Moving In: A romantic comedy and a classic girl meets girl story. Very funny and cute.
GLT: Same artist as Moving In! Anthology of short romantic stories.
There Was a War: A forbidden love story loosely based off of Irish mythology, amazing but sad.
Margoth and Lolita: High school romance about a goth girl and a lolita girl falling in love.
Compi: A magical girl story with two girls falling in love.
Pap Pap: A one-shot story about two girls meeting through coincidence.
Magic Advisor: A magical story about a girl who has an occult collection, and the girl who keeps trying to steal it.

If you're a fan of manga, check out Girl Friends by Milk Morinaga. It's really good and sweet and innocent. I really recommend it.

[Lisha]

Thank you so much for this!

[eslameldeeb]

@Lisha, why so much salt?
i think this summarizes my answer very well

it all boils down to the algorithm and how, due to their popularity, BL stories tend to be more emphasized than non-BL content

we can spend days discussing and criticizing BL genre, BL creators, BL readers.. etc, but it will all end with "well, everyone is free to do whatever they want!"
i personally don't care about who does what, i care about the way Tapastic executes their vision as "the YouTube of comics" and how they ignore a big chunk of their community's negative feedback on the frontpage's algorithm
and not only that, i think that Tapastic isn't aware that they are creating an only-one-pwerful-genre-and-the-rest-are-forgotten kinda platform, and most creators aren't BL creators, thus the resentment will increase day after day, and once their is a better promising webcomic platform than here, where creators would feel more welcomed, well-treated and not caught in a corporate agenda, they will leave to it without thinking!

[Mari]

Oh. a good GL is Yamashita Tomoko's Her. It's a bit bizarre though.

Basically Yamashita Tomoko has some phenomenal one-shots for all spectrums. One of their one shots was about a trans-woman living as a gay man in japan and it was gut-wrenching.

My fave mangaka <3 Their art style is not the best but the one shots have made me cry.

But yeah, as closing remarks I'd say unsalt that stick that's in your butt atleast if you want to keep it lodged in there.

[JKNNKL]

nhuhnunhu deddede ookkoko rfrffr

[BubooSenchan]

I love, love, love your answer. That's pretty true

[JKNNKL]

ihjnjunhuhun edededde plplkokopko gbbggggb

[infectedbloodcomics]

Thanks a lot! You know two or three more than I do. I'll check them out! I'm adding my own comics, then

The Green-Eyed Sniper - completed at the beginning on this month. It's about a love triangle between an assassin, a wanted war criminal and a pacifist.

Infected Blood - the story of how the character from GES became a war criminal (starts on 8 March).

@handpressbean I can see your point of view, however I think it's not true for a lot of people. Webcomics are really a wide medium and there should be room for everyone - how large or small that room is, remains to be seen. Trash is everywhere, and maybe to some people BL is like a guilty pleasure they may not admit to enjoy, but the thing is, it's saturated the market. Quite honestly, I don't give two shits if people like it or not, because it's not something I'm interested in and I won't make a BL comic hoping to become famous or something - I'm just saying that Tapastic and other platforms have no guts to be creative and try to promote anything new. They are completely focused on BL and a couple more very light genres. They like it this way, they make money out of it, but that doesn't mean we will all sit down and watch. Some will complain, some will leave, etc. It's a very human reaction.

[JKNNKL]

hhbhuhubgy edesseed okpkopko vfcfddc

[infectedbloodcomics]

Yes, I agree with you, no such thing as "should be", it's infantile self-entitlement. Tapastic is obviously all about the money (although they have an awkward way to go about their business - there are so many broken functionalities, it's ridiculous, but whatever), so they will never push for other types of stories to be marketed (unless some kind of miracle happens). So, fellow creators who don't do BL or gag-a-day or slice of life or whatever Tapastic promotes: be more creative than Tapastic, build your own connections through this (very broken) platform, try out other platforms, make your own audience and persevere! And yeah, don't be too salty about your genre not being recognized - nobody owns anything to anybody. At least, that's my take on it.

[Herofeeder]

BL makes more money then anything else here( probably ) ...tapastic will promote BL bcs of it. if you make something worthy of reading that doesnt have BL elements and build your audience with it ..you will be promoted too ..until then search for another site

[JessJackdaw]

I'm not v sure about how true this is but I saw a post once on forums that apparently if tapas focuses too much on one genre (BL) they'll lose money instead?

Ahh, yes and no. The more they promote an image of a homogenized community the more, in turn, they will be known for it. This can be a good thing as they'll attract more fans of the genre, but the reverse side could cause the audience/creators of other genres to seek a more diversified platform. It's a very real issue for Tapastic to wrestle with, when more and more of their popular creators of other genres are being snatched up by publishers.

Heck, there have been several popular creators Tapastic has lost just in the last month with Rise from Ashes ( https://tapastic.com/series/Rise-From-Ashes ) being one of the most notible. So, without much incentive to stay, many creators leave and take their fanbases with them.

(shrug) There's no telling what Tapastic wants, but with the way things are going, it might end up with only two genres in the end. (Which would make me so sad, I love this platform.)

[JKNNKL]

uhuhu gvgygvbgy eseseded kokokokko

[enshogirl]

I think the concern here is, how to grab these readers' attention to diversify their taste and perhaps lead them to more lgbt+ series that portray same-sex relationships a little better.

I think this is really an important point.

I think it's fine BL comics are popular (read and create what you like, right?!). However, it seems like some of the more BL titles riding the popularity wave could push readers to discover more LGBT comics that offer more.

How do we get the readers to go that direction? Maybe it just takes time. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[JessJackdaw]

are other sites like smackjeeves better at handling this issue?

Ahh, no idea about smackjeeves, but publishers all have different strategies to fix this.

Hiveworks curates it's own comic lineup (hand selecting from comics that apply to be featured) and they advertise all of them heavily on other sites as well as their own.

Webtoon's Discover section has a weekly notable group that cycles comics with good growth and a fair ranking (using one for each genre). Also the discover section sorts by time by default and not popular. New comics get a lot of views this way which greatly encourages beginning creators.

[joannekwan]

As far as what Tapastic promotes though, I think it is still relatively diverse. I don't see this BL promotion thing some of you are decrying.
If you mean the little banner features on the app after you scroll down some, those are just a cross section of what turns up on popular from what I can tell. Since the popular section doesn't appear on the app as it does on desktop (updating every 24 hours or so), I guess they had to put something there to show their webcomic selection that aren't the premium comics and their other little featured categories. I became aware of it when I was scrolling through it on my phone one day and Demon House was there right next to Les Normaux (both of those are gone now so I'm sure it's a cycle)

As for Staff Picks, I've only seen like what, 4 or 5 BL series on there out of the other hundreds? And Staff Picks are still pretty diverse, I know they picked both of Brandon Dayton's series (Green Monk and Bento Box) which are really professional and gorgeous. His stuff is work you could see published through Image or something. The only issue with his series is they update very slowly, so not super ideal for webcomics, but whatevs.

As for Daily Snacks, they're still mostly comedy gags with the occasional long-form, I don't see much of a change here since the app overhaul.

So if the stuff Tap promotes is skewed towards anything (especially with the premium comics in the app, and they promote those heavily), it's Korean webtoon-esque type work. Not BL.

[JessJackdaw]

As far as what Tapastic promotes though, I think it is still relatively diverse. I don't see this BL promotion thing some of you are decrying.

It's not really direct promotion, more indirect. I think most people are referring to the algorithm and the popular sections. Like if the daily feed isn't 80% gag-a-days and BL, I might think the world is ending. (I still like checking them nonetheless. Although I certainly don't get roused by BL bein' ace and all. Haha. XD)

We really can't change tapastic's majority userbase though... So there's really no point in fighting what people like. It's more of a wanting to have a diversified popular section than anything, which would take tweaking on Tapastic's part.

[alaingrey]

Wow I never figured that this kind of 'this is popular' talk would start to get me really uncomfortable but I think it's getting to that point on the forums, eh? O _ O

I guess something that concerns me about this 'anti-BL' stuff is that .....

1. BL writers are your fellow creators. I'ts nice to be nice to them and be inspired that people are working so hard and that a comic genre can be so popular. 10k people wanting to read a comic is really an incredible achievement and should be inspirational to us all.

2. what counts as one of these 'pandering' BL stories anyways? I draw in manga-like style and have a story that should maybe do a lot of educating about queer culture of the 80s, including a bit of exposure to leather culture, AIDS, clubs... all that stuff that everyone complains is missing from BL. But... it still starts out with two young hairless boys kissing lol. Is it a BL because its manga style and the boys are drawn cute? I don't want to have my comic labeled as BL or 'one of the good kinds of gay' because that rings bad to me. I don't want to be making a gay comic in some 'this is approved gay content' way.

Well anyhow, just popping in to say this topic makes me sad every time I see it and I think this time I feel saddEST to see it.

[beerpongmanga]

I think it's great that BL is super popular here and Romance is super popular on Webtoons. I wish there was more crossover between the webcomic world and the print comic world, because for a long time in the print comic world they were not convinced that a female demographic could drive comic sales, all while being completely oblivious of what's going on here and other webcomic-y parts of the internet!

If only we could all get together as an industry and grow the overall marketshare for everyone. Wouldn't that be nice?

That said, the popularity of BL comics on Tapastic is unavoidable to the extent that we decided to put our manga's title - BP - on our thumbnail as sort of a jab to the prevalence here and to see if we could snag some curious readers That despite our comic being probably one of the broiest on here, haha.

[UzukiCheverie]

TBH I sorta wanted to stay away from this discussion due to the nature of it but I just . . . it's really bugging me this morning so I feel like I need to join in xD

I'd agree with this. Like just change one of the two boys into a girl and it's your run-of-the-mill trashy shoujo. Like 50 Shades of Grey.

I think that's the worst part of it all. A lot of these comics tend to pander to the lowest common denominator - if you take away the gimmick of being BL, there's really nothing redeemable about a lot of these comics, there's nothing that lets them stick out from the crowd like comics that are actually trying to build a depthful story with well-rounded characters.

Don't get me wrong, I've read some BL comics out there that are great, but for every good BL comic, there are easily 1000 terrible ones. BL is essentially the new gag-a-day - it's what's popular so everyone wants to get on that in the hopes of making some kind of return, whether it be in subscriber count, $$$, or just plain "internet fame". And these specific comics that were good were good because they had characters that were more than just tropes and stereotypes, and unique plotlines that weren't just misunderstandings, overreactions, and relationships set up to fail. They were good because they were good stories, not because they were BL. If you took away the BL from those comics, or even changed it to a woman and a man, I'd probably still read them because they still have a decent story and are worth reading. Whereas the cookie cutter ones that I actively avoid without even clicking on it once are the ones that if you took BL away, I can almost guarantee you they would not get the views it does.

And I know I'm digressing here, but man am I getting sick of seeing all the BL comics on the front page. I'm not gonna hate on every BL creator out there, that's not what this is about (I can hate the genre all I want lol) but there are so many good, up-and-coming comics out there that are undoubtedly getting pushed down by the sea of comics that are literally all the same thing. And because of Tapastic's growth over the years and the rate that some of these comics have grown, it takes a lot more to get to the front page nowadays. The front page is just so boring now because it's always the same comics - a select few gag-a-days that have been around for years, maybe a fantasy comic that manages to just barely scrape by what they need to get to the front, and then HEAPS and HEAPS of BL, across Popular and Trending. But Tapastic's algorithm and how it works is really a topic for another day :/

And yeah, to the BL creators who are denying this and saying "But we work hard!" yeah, I know. It still takes work to make a comic no matter what the genre is, so I'm not gonna discount your work because of my personal tastes. Chances are, you're one of the few creators who has a series that's worth reading. But to be perfectly honest and harsh with you, if the basis of your comic is "two boys in love" with no edge or actual depth beyond that phrase, that's a problem of your writing skills and not the genre you picked. If you really, truly wanna do a BL comic, I, as a reader, am not going to stop you - but as a reader, I'm probably not gonna read it if it looks and reads the same as every other BL comic out there.