ratssmpzine

[ratssmpzine]

Zine Mod Applications Are Now Open!

Hello! Long time no see! For anyone who has been following this project, it's probably obvious that our publicly set deadlines have long passed with no news being posted. This is due to a combination of circumstances that have interfered with the current mod team's ability to keep up with our responsibilities and while we tried to pull through on our own for awhile, we've decided the best course of action at this point would be to look for some extra hands so we can get this thing finished! So we're opening up applications for staff!

The things we're looking for help with are as follows, listed in order of priority:

High Priority

Assistance with communication with members, record keeping, and behind-the-scenes organization. This would entail helping the current staff with contacting participants for deadlines and check ins and answering their questions as needed. You would also be updating spreadsheets as people are contacted!

Graphic design and image-editting help for creating contributor announcements, formatting pages for participants with written submissions, and helping with text-heavy pages of the zine.

Medium Priority

Art assistance, primarily helping one of the current mods with the artwork for the cover page, title page, and back cover, however art being incorporated into other pages would be welcome, but not expected. They may also choose to work with mods designing contributor announcements. If you're willing to help us out with art, we ask that you be able to use .psd files for convenience!

Management of the twitter and tumblr accounts, primarily being around to post announcements, reply to questions, and generally keep people outside the discord in-the-loop on important things!

Low Priority

Zine assembly using Affinity Publisher. This is something the current team is likely fully able to manage on our own, however if someone was interested in helping, we wouldn't say no! Just be aware that Affinity Publisher requires a one-time $60 payment and we do not expect mod applicants to buy a whole new program for us!

Applicants for mods must be at least 16 to apply! Our current hard deadline is September 15th with a plan to post the zine on October 4th, so keep that timeline in mind when assessing your availability, though we set a pretty distant deadline in the hopes of keeping things from getting too stressful! Accepted mods will also be welcome to make their own submissions to the zine beyond the work they put in as a mod if they so choose, but that's in no way required or expected!

Any questions can be asked here on this blog or dmed to @oneformercy if you prefer a private answer! We'll be keeping this form open until we feel we have enough of a team to get this zine finished, so there is no deadline, but we recommend applying ASAP if you're interested. We all truly appreciate the interest this zine has gotten so far and we're dedicated to getting it finished! Thank you to everyone for your patience!

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All emails have been sent! Everyone, accepted or not, should have received an email from ratssmpzine@gmail.com! If you applied and you did not receive anything, please either reply to this post, send us an ask, send a dm to @oneformercy, or email us to sort the issue!

Hello all! now that the 24 hours for people to correct their applications has passed, we can say with confidence that emails will be sent out this Friday around 5PM EDT! This gives us mods time to make a few final decisions about apps and finish setting things up in the server before we send invites!

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Hello all! now that the 24 hours for people to correct their applications has passed, we can say with confidence that emails will be sent out this Friday around 5PM EDT! This gives us mods time to make a few final decisions about apps and finish setting things up in the server before we send invites!

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Applications are closed!

Thank you so much to everyone who applied! We'll post a proper timeline tomorrow for when to expect responses, but until then you can expect emails to come out sometime over the next few days! If you were someone who applied today and we had to request access to your portfolio, you have 24 hours from when applications closed to remedy that before we'll unfortunately have to move on, so if you were a last minute applicant, make sure to check your email! Otherwise, you'll hear more from us tomorrow :) Stay ratty everyone!

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Less than an hour before applications close!

Monday has arrived and that means Tails from the Rats SMP is open for applications! Make sure you've read all necessary guidelines in our #zine guidelines tag prior to applying! Applications will be open until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, August 28th and email acceptances or denials will be sent out some time within the following week depending on how long it takes us to sort through the responses.

If there are any questions feel free to send an ask! Otherwise, we'll be thrilled to see what you all have in mind for the zine!

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Five hours left before apps close! I’ll do one more reminder at 1 hour left, then that will be it!

Monday has arrived and that means Tails from the Rats SMP is open for applications! Make sure you've read all necessary guidelines in our #zine guidelines tag prior to applying! Applications will be open until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, August 28th and email acceptances or denials will be sent out some time within the following week depending on how long it takes us to sort through the responses.

If there are any questions feel free to send an ask! Otherwise, we'll be thrilled to see what you all have in mind for the zine!

[ratssmpzine]

Monday has arrived and that means Tails from the Rats SMP is open for applications! Make sure you've read all necessary guidelines in our #zine guidelines tag prior to applying! Applications will be open until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, August 28th and email acceptances or denials will be sent out some time within the following week depending on how long it takes us to sort through the responses.

If there are any questions feel free to send an ask! Otherwise, we'll be thrilled to see what you all have in mind for the zine!

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With only 4 days left before applications close, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind everyone to check that the portfolio they’ve submitted can be accessed with the link they’ve provided! We’ve had a few apps come in with inaccessible portfolios and we don’t want to have to reject anyone because we couldn’t see your examples!

I’ll be going through apps today and sending email requests to people who’s files I can’t access, so keep an eye on your email if you’ve applied! If you don’t get anything today, you’re safe, but you’re welcome to send us an ask if you’re still worried!

If you haven’t applied yet, fill out our application here!

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Monday has arrived and that means Tails from the Rats SMP is open for applications! Make sure you've read all necessary guidelines in our #zine guidelines tag prior to applying! Applications will be open until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, August 28th and email acceptances or denials will be sent out some time within the following week depending on how long it takes us to sort through the responses.

If there are any questions feel free to send an ask! Otherwise, we'll be thrilled to see what you all have in mind for the zine!

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Our application process is halfway through! Find our application post here to apply!

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Monday has arrived and that means Tails from the Rats SMP is open for applications! Make sure you've read all necessary guidelines in our #zine guidelines tag prior to applying! Applications will be open until 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, August 28th and email acceptances or denials will be sent out some time within the following week depending on how long it takes us to sort through the responses.

If there are any questions feel free to send an ask! Otherwise, we'll be thrilled to see what you all have in mind for the zine!

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No fancy format for these I'm afraid, but per the results of our Interest Check, here are some guidelines for web weavers and cosplayers who want to apply to the zine!

Plain text below the cut!

Other Media Guidelines

In the responses to our Interest Check, we found two types of media outside of what we outlined that people were interested in submitting to the zine, those being collage/web weaving and cosplay! After some discussion, here’s our policy on both!

Collage/Web-weaves

Collages and web-weaves will be permitted in the zine with the same canvas size options as visual artists, however there will be a few rules!

Work should be distinctly transformed or layered with design kept in mind! We think of web-weaves more along the lines of an art composition or a piece of poetry composed using pieces of other works and that’s what we’ll be keeping in mind for in applications for web-weavers!

We ask that you try to be conscious of the licenses that the images you use are published under as, while this zine is non-profit and we will not be accepting any sort of money from it, it is a piece that will be published on gumroad and we don’t want to take risks! Works that have fallen under the public domain, photographs published under creative commons license, and similar sorts of things are totally fine, but if you’re not sure if it’s something that can be transformed for personal use, it’s probably best to avoid it.

In a very similar vein, if you want to use any fanart or fanfic quotes from other members of the community, make sure you have their permission not only to use it in a web weave, but to use it in a web weave that will be put in a zine! We’ll be asking for that during checks!

We will be asking for a list of all your sources for quotes and images so that we can cite them in the zine as well, so make sure you have those!

In general our rules for collages are mainly focused on ensuring the zine won’t get in trouble for the content used in a webweave! If you’re being conscious of that, you’re good!

Collage applications should be submitted using the Art section of the application.

Cosplay

Textiles, jewelry, and fabric crafting may appear in the zine, however we will not be accepting any photographs of actual people in cosplay. We just wouldn’t feel comfortable having someone’s face or body in a pdf that we’ll be putting up for anyone in the fandom to download.

What this means is that people who would want to submit textiles would be welcome to set up a little scene/display with their work and submit that as a photograph if they’d like! The same page dimensions as a visual artist would apply, so multiple photographs to a page may be necessary to meet those requirements.

We will expect that materials will be made for the zine rather than photographing work that you already completed before applications opened. Check-ins will be asking for work in progress photos of your piece just like everyone else!

When you fill out your application, we will be looking for examples of both the sort of thing you create and how you set it up as a scene, so make sure you submit at least one picture that falls in line with what you would be planning to submit to the zine as a final piece. Ideally, we’d love it if you labeled which one it was as well! Textile applications should be done using the Art section of the application!

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Our interest check is now closed! thank you to everyone who filled it out, we'll be looking through the responses this weekend! Applications will be opening next Monday, so keep an eye out for that, but until then, stay ratty!

Hello all! For the next week, we're running an interest check for Tails from the Rats SMP, a non-profit Rats SMP fanzine that takes inspiration from children's storybook anthologies to tell the tale of the attic rats' time in the Icraga mansion!

With Pirates having only just set sail a few days ago we didn't want to overwhelm anyone (including ourselves!) with open applications right off the bat, however we are looking to get a gauge on what we'll be heading into over the coming weeks! Filling out this interest check will be a huge help to us in seeing how many applications we may end up with, what ratio of artists to writers we're likely to see, and how many people will be interested in reading the zine at all! It's also a great way to ask us questions or make suggestions if you don't want to send them as asks, especially if you're an artist in a medium outside of 2-D art and literature who would want to contribute!

This interest check will be running for a week and will close at 11:59 PM on Friday, August 11th. Over the course of the week we'll be making posts outlining any guidelines that we'll have for zine submissions so that you have plenty time to look at them before applications open! Speaking of applications, they'll be opening on the Monday after this form closes and will run for two weeks, closing at 11:59 PM on Monday, August 28th! Participants will be picked in early September and we're hoping for a creation period that lasts through December. More details will be released as we post our guidelines though, so keep an eye out for those!

Stay ratty everyone and we'll see you again very soon! 🐀

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And that concludes our zine guidelines for now, but for artists who's work falls outside the boundaries we've outlined so far, don't fret! Once the Interest Check form closes, we'll be taking a look at the responses and discussing how we want to handle other forms of artwork! You can expect to see those guidelines posted sometime this weekend before applications open on Monday, so if your idea for the zine is something we haven't outlined in our posts today, make sure you fill out the Interest Check by 11:59 PM EDT tonight!

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Here are our guidelines for collaborations between participants, whether that be artists and writers, multiple artists, or multiple writers! Collaborations are welcome and encouraged here!

Plain text below the cut!

Collaboration Guidelines

Collaborations between participants are highly encouraged by the zine mods as they help the zine feel more cohesive and connected! You can sign up for the zine with a collaborator or you can team up with another participant once applicants have been accepted.

There is no limit on the amount of collaborations you can participate in, but each collaboration has to count as a “Main Work” for one member and will count towards their three pieces. For example, if an author was writing a fic and one or two artists wanted to team up and do art for it, the author would count the fic as one of their three works, but the artists would not have to. If an artist wanted to draw a piece and a writer was inspired to write a poem or story around it, the art would count as one of the three works for the artist but not for the writer. Basically, in every collaboration one person should have the work count towards their three piece limit, but all other participants would still be able to do three different works if they choose to.

A collaboration will count as your minimum one piece to submit to the zine even if you aren’t the person taking it as a main work! Participating in a completed collab is just as much a full contribution to the zine as a solo piece of art or writing.

For communication between collaborators participants will be allowed to open private threads in a particular channel and use those if they would prefer to talk separately from the rest of the group. If two members knew eachother before the zine, they are welcome to talk privately if they prefer, but for people meeting in the zine who may not know if the other participant is a minor, we ask that all communication take place where the mods can monitor what happens.

You can apply to the zine as a collaborator! Just make sure to write the name and discord username of the person you are collaborating with in the designated space so that we know to accept both of you if one of your applications is approved. This will not hurt your chances in any way, but we ask that you only use it if you genuinely intend to work together.

There is tentatively no limit on the amount of people who can join in on a singular collaboration, but this is subject to change if we find that massive collaborations become a problem for the zine layout and organization.

For collaborations between artists and writers: In collaborations between artists and writers, the guidelines for writers remain the same (1-3 poems or a 1k-10k word short story) but the requirements for artists are loosened somewhat. Firstly, collaborations between artists and writers are the only place where a canvas size smaller than the vertical A4 page would be allowed, as the image can be placed into the text, with writing taking up the rest of the page. Just keep in mind design when working with smaller canvases and try to pick a size where the text would still look good! For collaborations like this, the mods may make mock-ups each check in so that the canvas size can be adjusted if it fits oddly into the text. The requirements for a background are also waived— a submission could be a small headshot, bust or full body of the character reacting or emoting like the are in the text, or some detailed custom headers or sidebars, or even a small drawing of an object relevant to the story, perhaps in a design to be used as a scene break. However your group would want to do things is fair game!

For collaborations between multiple artists: The guidelines for these pieces are the same as the guidelines for an individual art submission. The final piece should still be a full, detailed image in one of the two provided canvas sizes, though how you decide to divide that up or work together will be up to you.

For collaborations between multiple writers: The word count limit of 1k to 10k remains the same for short stories, however if you would like to divide that into two separate pieces that are somehow connected or in conversation with one another, that would be allowed. The poem limit for a single work is also increased to four. If you want to insert poems into a short story or write a poem about a short story to either start or end it, the poem’s word count will count towards the word count of the short story. However, like with artists, we aren’t going to dictate how you decide to organize your collaboration.

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Here are our Artist Guidelines for digital and traditional art submissions!

Plain text version below the cut!

Artist Guidelines

Our pages will be A4 pages at 300 dpi and artists will have the option to decide to use either a vertical A4 page at 2480 dpi [width] x 3508 dpi [height] or a double page spread at 4960 dpi [width] x 3508 dpi [height] as the canvas size for their work. Smaller canvases are limited to collaborative pieces.

Both digital and traditional artwork are permitted within the zine so long as you are able to provide a high quality scan or image of your work that meets the size requirements of the page type you’ve chosen.

Pieces should have a .25 inch white border around the edges of the work. There will be pre-prepared .psd files of both the vertical A4 page canvas and the double page spread canvas with the border if you would like to use them rather than adding the border yourself, but you won’t be required to if you would prefer to do it on your own. If you are a traditional artist who would not be able to add the border in themself, we mods can add it for you, however we may request you submit earlier so that we can work with you in case the border creates any issues with your piece.

As well, when the zine is assembled, we will be adding page number of your piece in a 0.5 inch by 0.5 inch white square (including the border) in either the bottom left or right corner of the page depending on where in the zine it ends up. You do not have to worry about adding this square or the page numbers, but while working you should try and make sure that there’s nothing important in those spaces that could end up getting covered when we assemble.

Works must be a neat, completed piece, however that doesn’t mean it need to be fully colored or rendered. Detailed ink lines, flat colors, watercolor-style, grayscale works, fully rendered/painted works, etc. are all options for what a piece could look like so long as it looks intentional. Illustrations in books have a ton of variety, so we won’t be asking that everyone make fully colored and shaded artwork if they want to experiment in other styles.

Works should fill most if not all of the space on your canvas and should depict either a scene or something equivalent. Outside of collaborative pieces with writers, every work should have at least some minimal background.

While this zine is themed after a storybook, we won’t be judging artists based on if we think their artstyle fits any particular “aesthetic” . As I said before, art in books has a ton of variety and this is meant to be an anthology where the work of multiple different artists and writers are collected! While the discord may have some links to different books and artists to serve as potential inspiration for folks that want it, your art and art style don’t have to look a certain way to be included in the zine! 

In a similar vein, so long as the rats are recognizable to their design, proportional to their environment, and have their ears, tails, and fur, they can be as animalistic or anthropomorphized as you’d like! Outside of remaining loyal canon designs, there are no guidelines on how you draw the characters.

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Here are our Writer Guidelines for short story and poetry submissions!

Plain text version below the cut!

Writer Guidelines

Written submissions can come in the form of either short stories or poetry, though you are welcome to get creative with the specifics of how you would want to approach those two options. If you want to tell your short story in the form of letters exchanged between characters, that’s cool! If you want to get creative with the type of poem you’re writing, we’d love to see it! The mods will always be around to field ideas if you have something creative you want to try and you’re not sure it fits into a specific category.

If you are submitting a short story, your work should fall somewhere in the range of 1k words minimum to 10k words as the absolute maximum. 

There is no lower limit on word count for poetry so long as it is a complete work, but the upper limit stands! If anyone tries to submit a poem over 10k words I might cry.

One story counts as one of your three entries into the zine, however we will allow the option to count up to 3 connected poems as only one work as they are often much shorter.

The format for pages will be standardized to some degree, however we feel like the details of that would be best discussed when writers are actually selected and can provide their own input, so for now you don’t have to worry about the details, just know that there will be specific details on how writing should be presented on the page.

Writers are not required to format their own pages! Writing can be submitted as a plain google document and the mods will format it for you and add it to the zine. If you really want to format your own pages, you’re allowed to, you just don’t have to!

Poetry should be identifiably connected to Rats or a Rats character. You don’t have to name the character or give specific details about the canon in the poem, but when asked, you should be able to justify why what you’ve written is related to the Rats SMP.

While this zine will be focusing on the attic rats’ time in the mansion, stories that just recap or retell canon events are not permitted. You can explore the impact of an event or mention it occurring, but stories that simply repeat the exact same thing that happened in canon will be asked to change their idea.