See this announcement in the SH Forums here.
Art by CeciliusTheWitch.
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BLBL Short Story Anthology Event
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Hello again forum viewers, BL enthusiasts, and highly confused individuals alike! Our group, the Brilliant Library of Boys' Love, is hosting yet another event for the BL community on SH: our fourth collaborative anthology of seasonal Boys’ Love short stories! 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, tumblr, and twitter, so make sure you’re following at least one of these!
Our themes are Cold Farewells and Warm Reunions.
You are free to interpret these themes however you wish, as long as your story channels the mood of at least one.
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, as well as the ability to choose the background for the anthology’s cover! 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.
Cold Farewells Pinterest Moodboard
Warm Reunions Pinterest Moodboard
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Short Story Submission
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The short story submission period will run from now to November 30th, with the completed anthology beginning to release sometime around December 31st.
All stories have to be submitted by November 30th at the latest to allow for revisions to be made and finalized before the Anthology comes out. The earlier you submit, however, the more time you have to edit, so early submissions are highly encouraged. Edits and revisions will be accepted up to December 14th. After that time, no more changes can come through.
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Submission Rules
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1. In order to submit an entry, you must read and provide a written consent to both the anthology rules on this document and the consequences that will result from breaking them. This agreement can be placed anywhere on your entry submission, but the submission will not be accepted 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 format for submission:
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 anytime within the BLBL Anthology wait period (aka the time period after you submit your story to when we publish it.) Your story will not be featured in the anthology if we find it anywhere else during this period. You may post your stories anywhere else after the anthology has published them, or if you retract your submission beforehand.
4. Only one entry is permitted. This is meant to prevent reader burnout. If there are less entries than expected, an announcement will be made on the BLP discord server expanding the limit to two entries. If two entries are permitted, your entries must not be connected to each other.
5. No stories below 1000 words or over 5,500 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 published as oneshots (so no two-chapter stories). 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 November 30th, 23:59 anywhere on Earth.
– The last moment we will accept the revised versions is December 14th, 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 this rule is followed. Entries under “alt” accounts are also accepted, so long as these alts are not being used to submit a second 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. All Author's Notes for the stories are welcome and appreciated. Please send them along with the story, and include guidelines of where to put them. By default, all Author's Notes are put at the end of the story, but we will move them if you think they fit better somewhere else. Author’s Notes can only be placed on a story you have submitted, and they cannot be more than 500 words.
12. Pictures can be accepted as part of the submission, so long as the picture is not stolen artwork (aka if you have express permission from the artist and reasonable proof of this, or if you’ve drawn it yourself.) Any pictures that may require a Content Warning (such as NSFW or gore) will not be included.
13. 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.
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 objectionable 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 add more content warnings as we see fit.
16. 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 short one time. The replacement short, 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 if your life circumstances may demand this change.
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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 men in a somewhat romantic relationship with one another. One of these men should be the protagonist of the story.
Just having two boys 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. To expand upon this, if your main characters are in or enter 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 rape. No incest. No pedo.
2.1. We appreciate dark themes and topics, but please refrain from using them this time. These are SH guidelines, so the Anthology might be endangered on the site if it features prohibited content.
Rape can be discussed as a topic (negatively), but there can be no plot events stemming from rape and no actual depictions of rape within this Anthology.
Non-con falls under this rule automatically, while dub-con will be subject to revisions and strict consideration if it borders on non-con. Anthology mods reserve the right to ask for changes to your story on areas they interpret as dubcon even if you don’t agree with their interpretation.
2.2. No incest.
2.3. No pedo. Both of your main characters have to be above 18 years of age for any erotic/NSFW interactions in your story if you want to qualify for our Anthology.
If your character is 1000 years old but looks like a little boy, we still consider that “pedo” when reviewing a submission.
All stories that abuse any of these three rules (“No rape, no incest, no pedo”) will be rejected. Please be careful if you want to toy with these.
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 like a rule 2 violation.
With adult characters, you may explore manipulative relationships as a topic (negatively), so long as the manipulative relationship is not the BL relationship your story centers around.
4. GenderBender is okay as long as the transformation is “female to male” and only in conjunction with the Transgender tag. We will not accept stories with forced GenderBender on MCs who do not identify as male at any point in the story.
5. No 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 not prevent outdoor intercourse outright. If you either plan on writing this, or your story contains outdoor intercourse already, we ask you to pose these two questions to yourself 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, your story would be rejected if currently submitted, and requires slight editing. 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. Your BL couple cannot physically torture one another over the course of your short story without explicit consent. We are taking this literally; that means that 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, you’re probably good (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.
9. The story must explore at least one of the themes suggested by the anthology. A literal interpretation of your chosen theme(s) must exist somewhere within. If your story does not mention or explore one of the current anthology’s topics, 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 ourselves the right to refuse the submission of any story that abuses any loophole in the rules, especially loopholes that may be present in the “No Rape, No Pedo” rules.
