So I noticed there are some reoccurring questions and doubts written in the applications and since I've got some free time I thought why not help to ease some minds?

Do you have to see my ideas?

Yes and no. Of course we will have to have an idea of what you're gonna do for the zine once we accepted you, but since we're still in the application period it's okay if you keep it to yourself and work on it in silence. Also not everyone has an idea yet and we don't want to pressure them into thinking up something random on the spot when nothing is cut and dried.

'Reference'? Did you mean 'example context'?

Yes, that's what we meant! A selection of your favourite or 'best' works, so we don't have to go through your whole linked blog to get an idea of what your art/writing looks like when you aren't doing simple drabbles/sketches/answering asks!

The ‘where would you like to be featured’ question is a bit weird?

Yes, we were actually going to make it a single option question with "Physical Copy", "PDF" and "Both", but by allowing you to choose both options the "Both" becomes unnecessary and by giving you a third open option you can add any additional thoughts you have, like "I’d prefer to be in the Physical Copy, but if there are too many applications I'd be fine with only appearing in the PDF as well" or "I don't feel comfortable with being featured in a PDF, so I'd like to be in the Physical Copy only". I'm sorry for the confusion the third option might have caused!

The fear that there will be a lack of communication post being accepted

I'm pretty sure we mentioned that somewhere, but let me say it again anyway. We have a Discord chat where we'll invite every participant into. Mainly to check up on things and allow a better exchange of matters, but also to decide on things like “What merch will we do?” "Who does what merch?" and "Who will collab with who?" We hope that this will make communication with e.o. easier!

Will the participants receive a Physical Copy?

Let's say we have different opinions about this. One of us would like that, the other isn't sure if we can calculate the zine prices correctly if we do, since we don't know how many people will truly buy the zine when it's time, so that mod prefers it if they buy their own version. We decided to postpone that choice and talk about it with the participants first, along with the question whether we will be profit or non-profit.

Ship hate / drama

If we select you as a participant and there's a ship you hate and you can't stand that and you can’t hide your dislike either. Then leave. Both of us mods are multi-shippers with respect to other's ships even if we don't ship them. If you can't contain your dislike for a ship within the discord chat, we might have to ask you to leave so we can give your spot to someone else. We all want to have fun while creating this zine and create a supportive environment. If you can't do that, then you can't be a part of our project. (If you have any kind of critic, pls come to us directly and don't bring it into the group chat!)

That people laugh at/hate my art

There are so many of you who mentioned this and let me tell you: we want to hug every single one of you; you guys are adorable and we already love you so much! It's gonna be okay guys! I know we can't protect you from bad feedback and evil anonymous pests, but you aren't alone. Anyone who says anything bad about you should 1. Make it better before they dare to say anything bad and 2. Only says that because they arent even half as courageous as you are. It's not them who ignored their fears and applied but you, and that alone holds such higher value! We wouldn't choose you if we wouldn't trust or like you and your abilities, either! Even if we don't choose you, that doesn't mean it's because we don't like your style! We have to limit the number of participants to make the price for the zine affordable, though, so we have no choice but to make some kind of decision.

Mods disappearing without a word / Zine not being made for some reason

Well, you’re right, we haven’t put up anything related to our decision making yet because we wanted to see how the application process would develop first. The current number of applications still leaves room to accept more into the zine and should it happen to stagnant somewhen soon we might be able to avoid having to decide on such things, but if not, here’s how we plan to do things:

For one, we plan to make the physical copy with not more than roughly 60 pages. The ones we choose will be based on our personal preferences after reviewing your uploaded/linked reference material. We will make up a table for ourselves with ratings like “clean lines” “colouring” “creativity” “emotional depth” “meaning” “word choice” “grammar” stuff like that. We will not look at the amounts of reblogs or number of followers etc. Both of us will rate the works separately and the results of our voting and our personal opinions will then decide who we will choose. The smaller the entry you plan to work on, the higher is the chance that we can slip you in. But if your art/writing style makes it necessary to get more space and we are persuaded by it then we might take the bigger one over the smaller ones or we’ll add another page to fit it in, we’ll see.

Since we want to give those a chance who didn’t appear in zines yet as well, we’ll try to find a balance there, so whether you have experience or not isn’t really of importance for us to choose you, but if you do have experience and are willing to share that with us then it would help us a lot. (Thank you to everbody who wrote down their experiences so detailed, that’s really helpful!)

And since we’re at this point, let me say this as well:There is a chance that the pdf version and the physical copy will differ. We will discuss that with the participants later to not be unfair towards them but if people are okay with it then we would like to make the physical copy with our personal favourites, ‘the chosen ones’, while the pdf includes every participant. (We will send out two different mails therefore, the first to those who were chosen in the first run and a second mail a bit later to inform everyone else if there will be a chance for them to be featured in the pdf.)

In our applications form you can select multiple responses to the question “where would you like to be featured?” Please make use of that opportunity! If you’re okay with it, and want to make it easier on us, then you can choose to be in the digital version only and still be a part of the project or you can say “only in the physical copy”. Depending on your reasons for it, which you can leave in the hopes/expectations field, you might receive priority there. (You can change your application any time, so please make use of that or message us off-anon/with your registered e-mail or name so we will make a note regarding that)

If there are enough people who apply we would offer the opportunity of making a second zine as well, ‘The Hero Within pt.2′ so to speak, but that’s based on the number of applications and whether people would be interested in that.

Hey guys, we’re starting to receive asks about the zine’s organisation (thank you so much, your input helps us a lot!), but since the two of us have different schedules and time zones (we’re literally on different continents) it’s a bit difficult right now to discuss proper wording/responses, so I’m taking the freedom to leave a quick notice and we will try to answer everything asap!

So, first of all, the two of us are still a bit flashed by all the feedback we got. When we first got the idea, we thought “Hey, this would be fun” and jumped right on it. Since we’re new to this, though, we’re progressing only slowly to avoid any major mistakes and take our time to plan things through carefully. I’m sorry about the meek amount of information, but we’re working on that. To do it right.

But that’s also why we got the survey of interest. We said filling out the survey isn’t an automatic application, because it isn’t. But if those who are interested don’t fill it out now and wait for the application period instead, or if those who show interest now forget about the zine later, or change their minds etc, our given requirements have to be adjusted. Nonetheless, there’ll of course be differences between survey and application results, that’s unavoidable with a platform as large as this where information will be buried under the mass of posts etc. But that’s also why you should take a minute and fill out the survey. Because the more of you fill it out now, the easier it is for us to work out suitable conditions and get a grasp on what we’re dealing with.

Basically, we’re still doing market research. We won’t set up the limitations for the production of an item when we don’t know the market where we release it in, yet.

Since we don’t know which “size” the interest will have we can’t give actual details about applications, requirements, page/word count etc. All the data we gave out so far is temporal. We talked about 15-20 artists and 10-15 writers because that’s the kind of interest we expected when we started this. We talked about inviting certain people to it because none of us is sure yet if we can even meet our estimations if we don’t. Should the number of applicants exceed our expectations, or should there be more writers than artists that have an interest in this, we won’t ask anyone else to join us and change the currently set word count, etc etc etc. You get what I mean.

Anyway, we don’t want to exclude any less known content producers by putting up a hard requirement, like average number of reblogs etc. We don’t want the less known people to feel like “I won’t be accepted anyway, so why try”. The same goes for those who prefer or only can do traditional art and similar. But we also don’t want the more well-known content creators to think “Oh, it’s for them, better stay out of it then,” either. We’re still working on requirements to base our decisions on, but we will publish them once we can see the bigger picture more clearly.

Talk to us if you got an issue with our organisation or settings and we’ll work on it. If there’s no feedback, then we can’t. That’s simple isn’t it?

Anyway thank you all for your Asks, we hope to get to them soon! (And please have patience. We’re still in the “learning how to walk” phase but we’re learning nonetheless.)