Moving to shousetsubangbang.com
Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded out of LiveJournal fan culture, it started on LiveJournal, and since 2005, its primary home has been LiveJournal. And yet, we realize that it is now time for Shousetsu Bang*Bang to (mostly) leave LiveJournal.
As of our next issue, June's Issue 67, we will be publishing each new issue entirely at http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/. s2b2 won't disappear, but it won't be updated anymore. All of the posts currently there will remain accessible, but new content will not be added.
However, bb_shousetsu will still be a working community. It's still the best place we've found to post signups, issue announcements, and other editorial what-not, and it will still be updated regularly.
If you want to make absolutely sure nothing passes you by, though, sign up for our mailing list. You'll receive sporadic emails telling you about signups, deadlines, and new issues, so you'll never miss out.
With this format change come a few other changes that will be more of interest to contributors than to readers:
Obviously LiveJournal's recent TOS changes have been the catalyst for the move, but it's a change that's been coming for a while now. Trying to maintain both the LiveJournal presence and a mirror site has been an act of coordination that has not always been successful. LiveJournal's architecture has also steadily become a growing problem in terms of bogging down the site with code from outside sites, inserting unwanted formatting, and not allowing us to use scripts of our own. We're hoping that this will both streamline the process and give us time to make the website even better.
We do want to take this moment to reiterate how important comments are to encouraging creators to return. Truly, one of the things that kept us from making this move for so long is that comments are the lifeblood of SSBB, and LiveJournal has a built-in commenting culture that WordPress does not. If you're a regular (or even irregular) commenter on stories, we'd love it if you'd make the effort to keep going and set the tone for other readers. Even simple 'I liked this!' messages will help encourage others to respond.
Anyone who wishes to follow comments on an entry should go to the very bottom of that entry's page and click 'subscribe'; enter your address there, and the system will email you every time a comment is posted. You can also change your notifications by creating an account and managing your comment subscriptions.
Any questions? This is still a good place to ask them!
As of our next issue, June's Issue 67, we will be publishing each new issue entirely at http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/. s2b2 won't disappear, but it won't be updated anymore. All of the posts currently there will remain accessible, but new content will not be added.
However, bb_shousetsu will still be a working community. It's still the best place we've found to post signups, issue announcements, and other editorial what-not, and it will still be updated regularly.
If you want to make absolutely sure nothing passes you by, though, sign up for our mailing list. You'll receive sporadic emails telling you about signups, deadlines, and new issues, so you'll never miss out.
With this format change come a few other changes that will be more of interest to contributors than to readers:
- The story cap is now 25,000 words. This, however, is no longer a technical limitation, but one we have chosen to make sure all our issues (except the December ones) remain true to SSBB's mission of short fiction. LJ entries are capped at 64k characters; WordPress entries are not. Authors now no longer need to designate where longer stories need to be broken into two parts, as they will appear as a single page regardless of length.
- Stories no longer need HTML. WordPress' editor takes WYSIWYG entries much more easily than LiveJournal does, so starting next issue, rich text will do. (If your story is already coded for HTML, go ahead and keep it that way, but if it's not, now you don't have to bother.)
- Smart quotes are no longer forbidden. But they're still ugly.
Obviously LiveJournal's recent TOS changes have been the catalyst for the move, but it's a change that's been coming for a while now. Trying to maintain both the LiveJournal presence and a mirror site has been an act of coordination that has not always been successful. LiveJournal's architecture has also steadily become a growing problem in terms of bogging down the site with code from outside sites, inserting unwanted formatting, and not allowing us to use scripts of our own. We're hoping that this will both streamline the process and give us time to make the website even better.
We do want to take this moment to reiterate how important comments are to encouraging creators to return. Truly, one of the things that kept us from making this move for so long is that comments are the lifeblood of SSBB, and LiveJournal has a built-in commenting culture that WordPress does not. If you're a regular (or even irregular) commenter on stories, we'd love it if you'd make the effort to keep going and set the tone for other readers. Even simple 'I liked this!' messages will help encourage others to respond.
Anyone who wishes to follow comments on an entry should go to the very bottom of that entry's page and click 'subscribe'; enter your address there, and the system will email you every time a comment is posted. You can also change your notifications by creating an account and managing your comment subscriptions.
Any questions? This is still a good place to ask them!