Straight love comics

[ValisFan]

I'm not going to take any more crap from you guys and I will not apologize for my views. I'm closing this thread.

[Antitime]

I'm glad you're trying something where romance is not the entire purpose, but it sounds like you're looking down on people who write yaoi just because it's gay. There are plenty of things that can be explored in all kinds of relationships, gay, strait, whatever. I like to have a healthy dose of everything in a comic.
as for not having many fans- the biggest advice I can give you is respect. Once you learn to let go of your jealousy and respect the community, they will come to respect you too. I don't write yaoi, I got my fans through interacting, advertising, and hard work. If you do all of that, I'm sure you can get some fans.

[Iceloli101]

Of course theres a market for straight love comics. I think thats pretty much a given. Romance seems very popular here for one reason or another. I'm sure if you looked around a bit you could find some straight love comics that are pretty popular.


Though it would really be better for you to not talk bad about bl, gl, and shoujo on a site where bl in particular is very popular. You should understand that a lot of your fans for a romance comic (even if thats not the main point) will be fans of those types of comics as well. I don't want to sound mean but generalizing any genre or subgenre like that is very off-putting to its fans. Please try to come down off your high horse a bit and work on your own quality of work rather than tearing down the work of others.

[blankd]

(I apologize in advance for this massive wall, but there are things said here that would be in your best interest to reconsider.)

Theres a thread here on BL and GL comics but there is no thread on straight love comics. Does the Smackjeeves community even LIKE straight love comics? It really looks to me that most of the people here read yaoi stories. And the people here that do read straight love stories are mostly here for pretty frilly overly screentoned shoujo artwork.

Negative generalizations won't really net you any favors- also no offense but I don't think you've read the contents of the BL/GL threads on here. It's usually someone complaining about the amount of either OR voicing anxiety to having negative generalizations applied to their work simply because they want to have homosexual characters in a comic but don't want the stigma of being associated with "pandering to fans".

I am trying to make a harem style straight love comic "Salty Kiss" but it really isn't very popular yet and Smackjeeves may not be the best place for a straight love harem comic.

If you're making it for popularity, you're unfortunately doing it wrong. Do the comic because you want to, not because of potential fame. Also "harem" comics have their own inherent stigma, typically it's "oh great, Mr/Ms Normal is being fawned over by a platter of "sexy" trope characters for no really good reason."

It feels like a straight comic takes up a lot of time to set up the romances and finding motives for all the characters as to why they like each other. I've noticed in a lot of yaoi comics that the characters fall in love with each other rather quickly and oftentimes their motives are "because we are both gay."

While 90% of yaoi out there is shit, het is not somehow inherently better, it is just as formulaic and can be worse depending on what stereotypical characters they decide suit the "flavor" of romance best. (If you would like to know more about what I mean I can list examples or you can provide your own het series and I will help deconstruct them in a way that makes sense.)

Straight love involves the entire friendship, courtship and dating phases of the relationship and the motives about why the characters love each other feels a lot more complex to write. It is also pretty difficult to mesh together the different personalities of the male and female character, and most straight love stories don't typically have the same "seme uke" archetypes of yaoi comics and the girl and guy each have to have unique, yet compatible personalities for the story to work.

Sorry but you have the blinders on real tight if you sincerely believe that a whole genre is devoid of the problems its sibling genre have. I will also let you in on a little of the mysticism for all the awful yaoi out there; the "seme/uke" archetypes convert as thus- seme = idealized heterosexual male, uke = idealized heterosexual female, both stories are typically written with the same amounts of awful. There are good/notable works from all combinations of sexual orientation that "redeem the genre" but most of them are utter trash.

As for my comic Salty Kiss. It really is my first webcomic. Its not specifically a harem love comic, its more of an adventure-harem comic, where adventure comes first and the characters get to like each other more through adventure and working on the ship together.

That's great, however most/some other comics that do this don't actually list themselves as being of the "romance" genre and may be why you have so much trouble finding them on SJ.

Finally if you want to promote your comic, do so in the self-promo thread rather than shoehorn it in while soapboxing about the state of the romance genre, it might help you more. 8P

[OliveOil]

(I apologize in advance for this massive wall, but there are things said here that would be in your best interest to reconsider.)

Theres a thread here on BL and GL comics but there is no thread on straight love comics. Does the Smackjeeves community even LIKE straight love comics? It really looks to me that most of the people here read yaoi stories. And the people here that do read straight love stories are mostly here for pretty frilly overly screentoned shoujo artwork.

Negative generalizations won't really net you any favors- also no offense but I don't think you've read the contents of the BL/GL threads on here. It's usually someone complaining about the amount of either OR voicing anxiety to having negative generalizations applied to their work simply because they want to have homosexual characters in a comic but don't want the stigma of being associated with "pandering to fans".

I am trying to make a harem style straight love comic "Salty Kiss" but it really isn't very popular yet and Smackjeeves may not be the best place for a straight love harem comic.

If you're making it for popularity, you're unfortunately doing it wrong. Do the comic because you want to, not because of potential fame. Also "harem" comics have their own inherent stigma, typically it's "oh great, Mr/Ms Normal is being fawned over by a platter of "sexy" trope characters for no really good reason."

It feels like a straight comic takes up a lot of time to set up the romances and finding motives for all the characters as to why they like each other. I've noticed in a lot of yaoi comics that the characters fall in love with each other rather quickly and oftentimes their motives are "because we are both gay."

While 90% of yaoi out there is shit, het is not somehow inherently better, it is just as formulaic and can be worse depending on what stereotypical characters they decide suit the "flavor" of romance best. (If you would like to know more about what I mean I can list examples or you can provide your own het series and I will help deconstruct them in a way that makes sense.)

Straight love involves the entire friendship, courtship and dating phases of the relationship and the motives about why the characters love each other feels a lot more complex to write. It is also pretty difficult to mesh together the different personalities of the male and female character, and most straight love stories don't typically have the same "seme uke" archetypes of yaoi comics and the girl and guy each have to have unique, yet compatible personalities for the story to work.

Sorry but you have the blinders on real tight if you sincerely believe that a whole genre is devoid of the problems its sibling genre have. I will also let you in on a little of the mysticism for all the awful yaoi out there; the "seme/uke" archetypes convert as thus- seme = idealized heterosexual male, uke = idealized heterosexual female, both stories are typically written with the same amounts of awful. There are good/notable works from all combinations of sexual orientation that "redeem the genre" but most of them are utter trash.

As for my comic Salty Kiss. It really is my first webcomic. Its not specifically a harem love comic, its more of an adventure-harem comic, where adventure comes first and the characters get to like each other more through adventure and working on the ship together.

That's great, however most/some other comics that do this don't actually list themselves as being of the "romance" genre and may be why you have so much trouble finding them on SJ.

Finally if you want to promote your comic, do so in the self-promo thread rather than shoehorn it in while soapboxing about the state of the romance genre, it might help you more. 8P

Um...yeah. This, basically.

[Syllva]

If you want straight love comics, or basically anything straight, go to the local bookstore, go to amazon, go to the library. I guarantee you that 99.9 % of all media in the world has 0 gays...or gays that are either expendable, token, or there to be a joke. Though it seems that this site has mostly only BL comics, compared to ALL THE COMICS IN THE WORLD--published or not--it is nothing. So, shut. your. piehole. Also, I am offended that you abhor two guys together or two women together, yet the comic you are writing is something out of the Mormon dream? A harem comic? A straight harem comic? Where all the women want one lousy man? Sounds like the classic "men collecting women" sexism. Pathetic. If you think the BL and GL writers are living in a dreamworld then please check yourself pronto.

[paintedmare]

I'm not going to take any more crap from you guys and I will not apologize for my views. I'm closing this thread.

/flounce

I don't think anyone was 'giving you crap,' I think they were legitimately trying to explain why your aggressive criticism of BL/yaoi/shoujo comics was full of holes in its argument, and potentially give you pitfalls to avoid with your own comic so it could improve. But I guess you could throw a temper tantrum, too.

[Nigz]

ugh I missed the party =( lol

[robybang]

I like it when forum newbies think deleting the original message deletes the thread.

[mitchellbravo]

I imagine OP's thought process wasn't so much about getting people to actually suggest straight love comics, but to join him in whining about yaoi.

For general reference, since some people seem to be extraordinarily perplexed by this process:

[robybang]

But the alternative is so much simpler!

[Grotesque]

Well, the fact that everyone have differences, it's quite absurd to make an issue about something when the two sides don't share the interest.
Let each one be. To each, their own.

But on my own point of view, I don't like yaoi. But I understand that some people wants it, and they see something themselves about it that I dont, so it's for them, and not for me. Why would some people try to push their own beliefs/preferences on others?

BTW, I'm an amateur Yuri comics artist/writer.

[blankd]

Well, the fact that everyone have differences, it's quite absurd to make an issue about something when the two sides don't share the interest.
Let each one be. To each, their own.

But on my own point of view, I don't like yaoi. But I understand that some people wants it, and they see something themselves about it that I dont, so it's for them, and not for me. Why would some people try to push their own beliefs/preferences on others?

BTW, I'm an amateur Yuri comics artist/writer.

I recommend reading what I quoted, it was the original OP's post, it's never an issue to have a different opinion but it's another to make sweeping generalizations, have double-standards of the other or otherwise turn a blind eye to the flaws of the preferred subject.

[SRQ]

It feels like a straight comic takes up a lot of time to set up the romances and finding motives for all the characters as to why they like each other. I've noticed in a lot of yaoi comics that the characters fall in love with each other rather quickly and oftentimes their motives are "because we are both gay."

Yeah. That's cos we're a minority, and unless you live in a city you don't get a lot of choice as a teenager so you do tend to settle and enter into these awful relationships just because there's no-one else really there. But like my PE Teacher used to say when he forced us all to play rugby in freezing rain and mud, it's all character building!

(I totally had to quote blankd to get this btw haha)

You are right in a way though.

But I don't get why you keep saying "straight love comics". Regular love comics are straight love comics. You don't have to quantify it because its the genre's majority. Smackjeeves is the exception haha, not the rule.

[desideraht]

I feel that yaoi is overdone... and that it is often the same story over and over. Some of the BEST romance mangas I have EVER read were het romances (Kare Kano, Mars, Paradice Kiss, to name a few popular examples)... That being said, I do think that gay manga is over sensationalized. I am a gay man and I just don't get why gay shit is so great. My gay love isn't much different than straight love, which is why I can even relate to het comics.

The comic I am currently on has bisexual encounters. It's not a romance, but the protagonist has experiences with both men and women. It's not crucial to the plot, though, and is kind of an aside.