BL_Palace
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2020
- Messages
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- Points
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Art by @tiaf
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BLBL Short Story Anthology Event
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Welcome, forum viewers, BL enthusiasts, and highly confused individuals alike! It’s time for the 5th collaborative anthology of the Brilliant Library of Boys' Love – a themed collection of Boys’ Love short stories from authors here on Scribble Hub. We invite any interested writers or readers to try their hand in it!
The Anthology will be published on our group's official SH account here:
BL_Palace's Profile | Scribble Hub
Its published title will be determined via two polls. The first poll will be for title submissions, and the second will be for voting! All members of the community can participate, so stay tuned with the BL_P news and make your suggestions early so they can definitely end up in the poll! Polls will only be open for one week after posting. We’ll post announcements for the polls on the BL_Palace profile, our discord, and tumblr, so make sure you’re following at least one of these!
As we have officially finished all 4 seasonal anthologies, this time we’ll be moving onto a new theme pattern: elements.
The elemental theme of this anthology is
Fire
And our sub-themes are
New Sparks and Old Flames
You are free to interpret these sub-themes however you wish, so long as your story channels the mood of at least one theme and the main theme (fire).
Much like in previous years, writers will be grouped into author teams in the BLP discord server based on the theme(s) they choose to write under. In these teams, they can “compete” during the anthology’s submission period for glory! Since a team’s winning is based on their combined comment point scores, theme teams with more authors have an advantage.
Authors of either theme are welcome to unite and beta-read / give advice on each other’s short. If you know you have WIP abandonment issues, perhaps let your fellow writers or potential theme-mates know so you can hype each other up about actually writing your stories! We encourage writers to help each other regardless of theme alignment, though there’s no pressure if you prefer to lurk.
And of course, we’ll be providing moodboards during this anthology as well! These moodboards are a mod-compiled collection of images which exist to provide both inspiration and entertainment based on this year’s themes. Of course, you are not required to use the boards for your entry. They’re simply here if you’re interested.
Old Flames Pinterest Moodboard
New Sparks Pinterest Moodboard
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Short Story Submission
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The short story submission period will run from today (11th of April) to the 11th of June, with the completed anthology beginning to release sometime around the 11th of July.
All stories have to be submitted by the
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Submission Rules
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1. In order to submit an entry, you must read and provide written consent stating you have read the rules and accept the consequences that result from breaking them. This agreement can be placed anywhere on your entry submission message, but we will not accept it without this acknowledgement.
We also ask that you include with your entry which theme(s) you’re writing under, the word count, and a short list of tags which describe what you’ve written.
Here is a suggested submission format, though you are not bound by it:
Message Title: Winter Anthology Submission - YourUserName - YourTitle
Message contents:
[Your acknowledgement of the rules]
Title:
Theme(s):
Word count:
Tags:
Content Warnings (if relevant):
Story/story link:
2. The story must be an original piece of fiction, previously unpublished and unrelated to other works. Fanfiction, AUs, spinoffs, prequels, or sequels of your existing stories are not permitted.
3. Your story cannot be posted anywhere else before it is published in the anthology. You may post your stories wherever you please after the anthology has published them, or if you retract your submission beforehand. If we find your story elsewhere before this, we will remove it from the anthology.
4. This year, up to two entries are permitted. These entries must not be explicitly connected to each other.
5. No stories below 1000 words or over 6,500 words will be accepted. This is a hard limit. Editing and trimming help will be offered by the anthology’s mods for stories that exceed the word count limit by 100-300 words -- but anything longer than that has to be cut down and edited by the author themself before submission.
All stories must be submitted as oneshots. These oneshots can be expanded upon after being published by the anthology, but we ask that authors keep their stories concise for the actual anthology.
6. The closing dates of first submissions and revised submissions are defined as follows:
– The last moment we will accept the rough submissions is 10th of June, 23:59 anywhere on Earth.
– The last moment we will accept the revised versions is 25th of June, 23:59 anywhere on Earth.
7. All submissions must be sent to this profile or to the main account of our BLBL Group on SH – @BL_Palace. These accounts are:
BL_Palace | Scribble Hub Forum
BL_Palace's Profile | Scribble Hub
8. You can send your story through PMs, or by sending us a link to a Google Doc – whichever method you prefer – but again, these must be sent to the accounts above. Please do not send your stories to the mods through discord DMs.
9. When submitting, please specify which author's name you wish to publish the story under, the title of your piece, and the link(s) to your account(s) here on SH or SHF. You must have an account on one of these platforms in order to submit. Anonymous entries are permitted, so long as you have an account. Entries under “alt” accounts are also accepted, so long as these alts are not being used to submit a third story.
10. There are no formatting rules, but if you want to use any LitRPG or otherwise complex formatting, you must take care of it before submitting the story. The organizers of the Anthology will not be responsible for creating this type of formatting, however, we will implement it if you send us the raw HTML.
11. Any Author's Notes for your story are welcome and appreciated. Please send them along with the story, either in your submission PM or through a second, and include guidelines telling us where to put them. By default, all Author's Notes are placed at the end of the story, but we place them elsewhere if you request it. Author’s Notes can only be placed on a story you have submitted and cannot be more than 750 words.
12. Character Theaters, other jokes, and small Fanfic/AUs related to the story in question are also acceptable. These will be placed in Author’s Notes, and treated as such. They must be related to the story you publish and not to other stories outside of it, including your own.
If these extras cause your AN to go over the limit, and your story is at least 3,500 words, you may redirect up to 500 words from your short story word limit to your AN limit. (Should you use 250 words, for instance, your short story word maximum would be 6250, and your AN maximum would be 1,000.) You must let us know in your submission message if you have decided to do this.
13. Pictures can be submitted alongside your story or given to us before the edit deadline has passed, so long as the picture is not stolen artwork (i.e. if you have express permission from the artist and reasonable proof of this, or if you’ve drawn it yourself.) AI art will not be accepted. Any pictures that may require a Content Warning (such as NSFW or extreme gore) will not be included.
14. You can market or promote your other stories in your Author's Notes (ANs), but these promotions cannot be more than one to two sentences, and cannot be all that you have in your author’s notes. If you said less about your Short Story in the ANs than your other books, then you are doing it wrong! ╮ (. ❛ _ ❛.) ╭ This Anthology is all about promoting our BL Authors, but don't overdo it.
15. If your story features content that you feel may be distressing or triggering to some readers, please provide Content Warnings with your submission (we will publish them as you provide them when we release your story). We reserve the right to modify your content warnings or to add more as we see fit.
16. The anthology has an initial submission date for rough drafts, and a post-submission edit deadline for accepted entries. We will send a response to initial submission PMs (usually within one week) to let you know whether an entry has been accepted. If any rule violations are found in your work, the response will say it has been temporarily rejected and tell you which rules have been broken in which parts of your story.
We prefer that post-submission edits are provided on the same PM thread as the initial submission, though there is no requirement.
16.1. While a story is usually accepted at the initial submission date, if post-submission edits cause it to break any rules, we will suspend the entry until these new infractions are addressed. If these are not addressed in time, only the previously accepted version will be published in the anthology.
16.2. Submissions suspected of having been written to cause intentional distress, or post-acceptance edits that appear to be a deliberate attempt to sneak a rule-breaking story into the anthology, will result in all submissions by the author being removed from the anthology.
17. You can withdraw your submission at any time, even after the final edits. If the rough submission date has yet to pass, you may replace your withdrawn entry with a different story once. The replacement story, like your original, must meet all submission guidelines. Please think carefully if you’re considering swapping entries, since this replacement is final.
If you want your story to be removed after it has already been published in the anthology, you must message us about it directly with strong justification. We prefer that you didn't, but we can understand that life circumstances may demand this change.
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Content Rules
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Content Rules
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1. No “no homo”.
Boys' Love should be an important element of your story. It has to feature at least two boys or men (inclusive of transgender boys/men) in a romantic or sexual relationship with one another. One or both of these characters should be the protagonist of the story.
Just having these two characters hang out together “as friends” wouldn't count as a Boys' Love story. There has to be at least some “more than friendship” love if you want your story to qualify.
Essentially: bromance and “no homo” friendship ≠ Boys' Love.
BL between side characters or occasional flirting between the main characters that leads nowhere does not count either. Furthermore, if your main characters are in or enter into a BL relationship but are both absent for more than half the story, the mods will treat them as side characters and invoke this rule.
2. No non-con, dub-con, incest, minor-adult romantic/sexual relationships, or works that sexualise underage characters. All stories that abuse any of these rules will be rejected.
2.1. For the purpose of adhering to SH’s rules and ensuring everyone’s safety and comfort, rape and sexual assault cannot be depicted in anthology submissions.
Rape can be discussed as a topic (negatively), but there can be no rape in your main storyline and no actual depictions of rape within this Anthology.
Non-con and dub-con are also prohibited. This includes forms of non-con and dub-con outside of rape, including but not limited to: forced groping and touching, forcing or blackmailing characters into relationships, and other acts used as literal or literary stand-ins for rape. Anthology mods reserve the right to ask for changes to your story on areas they interpret as non-con or dub-con even if you don’t agree with their interpretation.
2.2. No incest.
2.3. No minor-adult romantic/sexual relationships or sexualisation of underage characters. All characters involved in any erotic/NSFW interaction in your story must be at least 18 years of age if you want to qualify for our Anthology. Characters engaging in relationships must either both be at least 18 years old or both minors of similar ages.
If a character is 1000 years old but looks like a little boy, we still consider that character to be a child when reviewing a submission.
3. Emotional manipulation of minors by adults via gaslighting, grooming and the like will not be tolerated in the anthology. We will treat any instances of this as a rule 2 violation.
With adult characters, you may explore emotionally manipulative relationships as a topic (negatively), so long as the manipulative relationship is not the BL relationship your story centers around.
4. Gender Bender is okay so long as the transformation is “female to male” and only in conjunction with the Transgender tag. We will not accept stories with forced Gender Bender on characters who do not identify as male at any point in the story.
5. No conventionally illegal sex acts. This applies to necrophilia, bestiality, etc. Furries and similar types of characters do not count towards bestiality, nor do vampires or other sentient undead count towards necrophilia.
5.1. We will permit outdoor intercourse provided that all parties involved (or potentially involved) are consenting. If you wish to include outdoor intercourse in your story, we ask you to consider these two questions before submitting:
- Could your characters be easily stumbled upon? For example, by someone turning a street corner or walking a bit further on the beach than the average person?
- Are your characters in close proximity to other people, especially minors?
If you answer yes to either of these questions, then your story will not be accepted. If you’d like, you can work with a mod to alter the context of the current scene.
6. Tragedy and/or Bad Endings are okay as long as the tragedy has nothing to do with a character's sexual orientation. Our anthology is about celebrating homosexuality, not showing how tragic it can be. Note that if your story is a tragedy, this should be noted in the tags or content warnings.
7. The characters in your BL relationship cannot physically torture one another over the course of your short story without explicit consent.
However, if your story contains parallel worlds in which the leads were enemies, transmigration into a character who was previously tortured or would be tortured in the future, regression with one character having been tortured in a previous life, or any similar situations with your leads not torturing each other in your specific storyline, this should be acceptable (though we reserve the right to reject stories that we feel abuse the vagueness of this rule).
8. No PWP (“Porn Without Plot” or “Plot? What Plot?”) stories, as these violate SH guidelines. We use Scribblehub’s 50% threshold when determining whether a story is PWP.
9. Your story must include the theme of Fire and explore at least one of the sub-themes. Your interpretations can be literal or metaphorical, but must be clear and present as a key element of the story.
If your story does not include these themes, you will be notified that you broke this rule and will have to adjust your story accordingly.
10. Do not use wording that directly insults/demeans certain real-life groups (for instance, racial, sexual, or political slurs) unless you plan to explore the impacts of these on your characters.
11. We reserve the right to refuse the submission of any story that abuses any loophole in the rules.
We will send a response to your submission DM to let you know whether your entry has been accepted. If any rule violations are found in your work, the response will say it has been temporarily rejected, and tell you which rules have been broken in which parts of your story.
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